


































































































































































































































































































































































































































-yu * * s _ \ i b b 

* o r O v * 

^ ° • ^ * 


\y v 

o o' 


i ^ v -* . 

. , ^ V 

tr \ \ r '. -.V » 

cC' ^ * "V x 

\v “y^. /■ . V'Cs > 

\' CL- <■> y o ■"> 

* \^ V * 0 s, o ' ^ , 

V X '* > 0 > V c> 

S / . A "& T- f? 5a * ‘ -£> 

^ t, ^ * Mi o ^ .uy 



-> » 



J (J _ . * /\ 

k r*> ^ c 0 N c k ’ f h 

;>: v r ^ ^ 

% * 


^ > * 
S* . 0 ° 




^ V vr. ✓ ^V\>yS s ' > r\ 

\ rP y * (V 

'” \> i ’*‘° V „ 

V A s /, ^ Ar* 

s s *TS f- 

.;> s' *- 

<p \V - / v ' ^ V 

C /*- ^ 7 - '/,-' ''vj cr \V <fl 

C/3 «<» <5 (' / v< \\V •V' ,/> 

* V? ^xr> y VJSeAK * \j> * 

S -V * <s» «*. A - ' - 

* * s «lC' a v I 8 4 'v^, 0 * ' \\ 0 N C ^ y * 

0° ’ "* J < J *a 

x &/<lls7-> * •>- AN 

\ , A -TV \y c ^ 

O0 » j ?° t 

0 V ^ 




\ v 




^ , V 

* ft'” > ^ri» O s'?' 

' sS W JN ° ^* 0 , l* V s s» 

-^- ^ ~. <3 <5, e ,<, c 

y T^tm \ ^ ^ ^W/hm <* * 


0 ^ ^ v 0 / *c- 

; x j a'c ^ ^ ;M^. 

..'. *-.;..*v V"-.l 




% o V * 
?M /. ^’v 

k ' .- .s 


x ov - * >5. s> a - ,p y y ^mj-^ * 

>r * tt u s ^ »<0 . <* 7 0 J> X A yu 7 / » a S s a G 

»,*o, f0 ^ y <-«' c « / . V .0^ • • 

' c ' *&(!%!%> + >• jC ^ 

'. - O0 ,( ^ w : 

* <a - 7 -. * o >0 °x. ' ^ * 

i\* ty Zt ' > _ rf- c -^- ' L'Jr v \v *><. ✓ _„, „ 

y « ^0 C‘ a- c*. y f 0 

•’, %. " \> ■,'” r„ > R n> » 

M V ^ / hr «A •' 


^ \' •<£. ^"\V VV 3- 5 ,-\ 

^ ^ % ,, Co 

. V s s * * r . 0 N Cy* q 

v v\^.^ > V 



c * 



^ ^ V 

^ •< V- V ® 

^ o \0 9 ^ l yCM 

«<• *? 



c° n ' c */ / c.!'”*'\o^\.' 1 * 

^ y Ci . s 



0 * \ \ ' .. sJ, 

a\ . o N C . t' 

\\ / *' - 

-< V- V ® A\ 


yiA. 8 ' 



.’ 0 ',w// o ■•■ '•■_ \<m** > 

y * ^/- ^ • I A * \^ s * o , *>- ^ o . 0 • ^.° » a I -v • v N ^ V 

O v s.s^o, o v ^sS p * 0 ^ f. ' * 0 /■ (C*- \> sS 

' % ^ * A Ah c ** n * 

,^ v % : piifcc « <> « 



C 0 N C ♦ l h 


cj* * 



0 * X 



























V *o 

* *j> 


w 




a ■>* 

<-> ✓ * o 

*- * •) „ 0 ’ oS' 



♦*v% 

°. s* <A 3 *, 

V c o s «« 

*> -i'tVv <* O 




a v° 


,0 ©. 



<* 

%. * 

a0' » ' * »/ C- 

% / :Mj)^ « 

.^ V< v - 

•> .>> * 

J3' <V ' o . i ■* A ' ! i/''r W T'' ..o' 

0 °V^< \ /' .‘^ *. % * * 0 ° o • 



■s' X *• 

o o' 


. %*■»,, ^ 4 
' * ° x ■%• V s' 

,<P/i* r <<■ \X> * 

'§J/n, ° °lr> <(v o 

' Z . 7 

£ /> A 

r «v ® 

* o> * 

> y V 




*> _rvTN*v ^ 

v 

= \° °<. 

'*% * a N ° ’/ v< S'* ^ y 

aV * ,R J?) *- -1° 



^ ^ * 


V. 


■# 




-/>. 


x o o X 



.X"--- ■ ... 

p . » ...... ', o C .-' 



\ 0o y 


, - CSV ^ 

!> V- 

y- T^. ,3 s > . rf. 

rP s K ’ ■ * rvO o_ 4- 

^ ^ <) M 0 v' 5 0 , * 

'•*'♦/> ^ »'*« • /i 

^ ^ ."A AV 

^ - f v ■ 4 * - J ' *? ; 


%. ^ 




. ^ ^ I ww , 

, ■ .<£ 

0 ■>> K "*■ s'^ ’X f/ J s s »G 

/ .‘ji: % % c,°"o , 


^°x. 






\ 0c ^. 

'N^g 4 > rf- 

^ c-tyv s O ■ cK. x 's'^yy^ o 0 q_ #- \ <3-*' 

*.|S* V ^ N .,», ^ *=S» ’f° ,,„ »«,'* \ s --, .. 

^ * 0 * O \. S S 1 /, s' .0 ^ 0 f O . \' * S . xr>_ ^ > 


V» V 



J 

<r- 

'P 

0,,,> ^ V \ X 0 N 

c « ,r?/ ' 
c ^ 


A N ^ ,v .. 

Vjy^s r 

NVi _ s 


aV ^ .r n ^ 

^ f z 

c> << 

' 0^ 


sV ./> 






«. ^ -4 

y o * V * A 

.0* A * V ' ' * VX . 

C. <; » ^ op P 

^ V 

■ft A .; » . j.0 O x 


0 A 0* 'O, *8,-1* 


C^ r y 

* * A . ^ ^ ° N ° " 0^ ^ 0 A *^v 

^ ^ R ^ * r . ^ 

' % / :® 3 mz +* 4 ? 


?$W * A^ V %, '• 

0 . .-• -4 <1*/ 

t) V K * \^ N '?/a X ^ 

V C 0 c -P 



.^* ^tA ^ A + 

& y s, ^ oP O- /s 

. v cX * ') N o o 

■ x \ s lIoL^ > / »'•■. % 

,\. * •„ ■% X* ' .o -o- A " c < 

' : - 'f ^ z 

^ ^ ; OT® r ^ ' 

V* V' - ' ^ * 


>• V 


0 o 



* -v 

*4 r^ y 

■* ,A ■ O. ** / s s o 

\\ r\ N r *'/'* 7 iV 0 s Ts 

sV t 0 # o. -0 v v 

4 ^ « _rvTsrv <^ O 1 r v x 

V V 


> ,0- 


0 / V c. 81 n\V '// 1 N ° * \ * o a 'c- 

* ^ v ^ ' • • . • , V ^ V, 

% $' :M&/a t ^ 

Z 7” ./ 



























































OF 


Two Eternities: 


A LIBRARY OR SCIENCE, 

BEING A HISTORY OF THE CREATION, ORIGIN, AND EVOLUTION8 
OF PLANETS AND THEIR INHABITANTS; CREATION AND 
HISTORY OF THE EARTH; ORIGIN OF LIFE AND 
OF THE SPECIES; DESCENT OF MAN; 

PRE - ADAMIC RACES; THE 
WORLD BEFORE THE 
DELUGE. 


FUTURE of MAN, of the EARTH, and of the SUN. 


LIFE AND DEATH, 

THE HERE AND THE H EREAFTER. 


Facts from Nature, Novel as a Fairy Tale, of Stupen¬ 
dous Importance to the Human Race. 


BUSED ON ESTABLISHED DATA 


Of Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, Geology, Biology, Anthropology, 
Archaeology, Zoology, Embryology, Metamorphology, Geometry, 
Chemistry, Botany, Physiognomy, Surgery, Sociology, Psy¬ 
chology, Traditions, and Religions op the Wobli>. 

/. o 




iPYRIG 


By WILLIAM E. JURDEN, A. M.,M. D. 0 : - : 


“Produce your cause; bring forth your strong reasons; show us what shall happen; ahow the former 
things, what they be, that we may consider them, show the things that are to come hereafter. Magnify 
the law, and make it honorable."— Isaiah. 


FINELY ILLUSTRATED. 


PUBLISHED BY 

DR. wrvl. E. JURDEN, 
Eau Claire, Wisconsin. 



* 














Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1890, by 
WILLIAM E. JURDEN, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 


All Rights Reserved. 






TO 

WIFE AND DAUGHTER, 

ALICE AND PHCEBE JURDEN, 
THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY 


DEDICATED. 



PREFACE. 


This book is an attempt to explain the origin of 
life and of man on our globe, to give a history of the 
world and of the universe from its beginning, and to lift 
the vail which hides the future. It wdll attempt to prove 
the following new and original propositions : — 

1. That worlds have periods of growth, develop¬ 
ment, and decay. In a more magnificent sense, their 
beginnings and histories correspond to the beginnings 
and developments of individual human life : Inception — 
Embryos — Birth — Childhood — Manhood — Old Age, 
and Death. 

2. To know the series of changes in the life of a 
human being, is to know the natural history of all human 
beings ; to know the evolutions in the life of one planet, 
is to know the natural history of all planets. And in like 
manner as we study human life in all stages of its devel¬ 
opment, so, also, we look out into the heavens, and be¬ 
hold worlds in all stages of their natural existence. 

3. Comets are planets in embryo ; like the embryos 
of all life, they do not all reach maturity, being often 
precipitated upon planets, or drawn into the vortex of 
suns. They wander in space, carried by the ether cur¬ 
rents imparted by the rotation of great suns, until their 
consuming fires have condensed for them a nucleus, rock- 
encrusted, and a surrounding atmospheric envelope, upon 
which a sun’s rays can act, imparting axial and orbital 

[vii] 



PREFACE. 


• • • 
vm 

motion, when they appear in a changed aspect, new-born 
babes among the planets. 

4. The earth was once a comet,— a fiery, phosphor¬ 
escent, burning chaos of matter, wandering in space. 
The comet earth, like the inception of all comets, was 
drawn by the sun out of the “formless void,” “dark' 
waters,” distant nebula of space. The inception of our 
world was the flame imparted by the rays of a maternal 
sun, as when carbon gas is touched with fire. ‘ ‘ God send 
let there lee light , and there was lights 

5. The first day, or period, in the history of the 
earth as a planet, is now being re-enacted in the planet 
Neptune, the most remote planet in the solar system, 
babe of the sun, youngest sister of the earth. Neptune 
still possesses many of the characteristics of a comet. 
Stars can be seen through her in all parts save the central 
nucleus. Infinite ages ago, when the earth was young, 
in the first day of her history, she occupied the place of 
Neptune, and differed not essentially from her ; the cen¬ 
tral core of fire had become encrusted with red glowing 
rock, while a dark atmosphere of dense vapors, ten thou¬ 
sand miles in depth, enshrouded the world in darkness; 
thus “ God divided the light f rom the darkness .” 

6. The second day or period in the world’s history is 
now being repeated by the planet Uranus. Oxygen has 
found its equivalent in hydrogen, creating watery vapors, 
and from the depths of black sky is being poured out 
waters in one universal shower, while an intervening 
purer atmosphere divides ‘‘ the waters which are under the 
firmament from the waters which are above the firmament.” 

7. The third day or geologic age in the history of 
the world, is now represented by the planet Saturn. The 
accelerating rapidity of axial rotation has caught up the 


PREFACE. 


IX 


superabundant cloud-banks of cosmic matter forming 
gigantic external rings. Beneath the mighty depths of 
dark atmosphere, mountains of recently upheaved rock 
lift their bosoms above the waters. In this manner God 
said, u Let the waters under the heavens be gathered to¬ 
gether unto one place, and let the dry land appear / and it 

VMS SO.” 

8. The fourth day in the world’s history, as at the 
close of each preceding day, the earth assumed a place 
nearer the sun, and occupied the present position of the 
planet Jupiter. Under the rays of a closer and brighter 
sun, vegetation, which began in low forms on the third 
day, now covered the landscape, as if by magic, feeding 
upon and storing away into immense beds of coal the 
dark envelope of carbon clouds, letting in for the first 
time upon the surface of the earth the light of sun, moon, 
and stars, u for signs and for seasons and for days and 
for years.” 

9. The fifth period or day in the history of the 
world, our planet occupied the place of the asteroids. 
Stimulated by the life-giving rays of a still nearer and 
brighter sun, the fishes and low forms of life, which since 
the third day had filled the waters, now evolved higher 
and amphibious forms. “ The waters brought forth abim- 
dantly the moving creature , ” winged fowl appeared in the 
open firmament of heaven, the Age of Reptiles had come, 
and u fowl multiplied on the earth.” 

10. The sixth day or epoch in the history of the 
earth, she occupied the place and represented a similar 
appearance and aspect to the planet Mars. A nearer sun 
shone down with a new vitalizing power, transforming all 
the types of former life ; the human foot and hand, the 
human form and a dim miniature of the human brain, 


X PREFACE. 

made their advent in the world ; monkeys, apes, orangs, 
chimpanzees, and numerous human caricatures made their 
appearance, crossing, propagating, and rising higher; 
while out from the progressing and evolving cosmos of 
material, u God said let us make man in our image 

11. The seventh day began with the Noachian 
Deluge, when the earth changed its polar axis, and 
assumed its present position in the heavens, a position 
still nearer the sun, bringing with it the calm stability of 
human history, and a period of quiescence from the war 
and turmoil of elements, by the activities of which the 
world had been evolved. ‘ 4 And on the seventh day God 
rested from his labors A 

12. The eighth day or era in the history of the world, 
yet to come, the earth will occupy the position and place 
of the planet Menus. Then will come a new unfolding. 
Man will become a being grander and better, the race 
will climb up to a homogeneous unity, all men will be of 
one heart and one mind, the millennium will have come, 
mankind will have beaten their u swords into plowshares 
and their spears into pruning hooksd ’ In that new and 
more genial clime, when the earth shall have taken a 
position nearer the sun, “ the light of the moon shall be as 
the light of the sun , and the light of the sun shall be seven¬ 
fold in the day the Lord bindeth tip the breach of his 
people , and healeth the stroke of their wound. ” 

13. The ninth day and age in the history of the 
world, she will assume the place of the planet Mercury, 
near the sun, at last a laden world of death and rock, the 
tomb of all preceding ages, sarcophagus, shroud, pall, 
and bier of all the past, waiting for the resurrection 
promised by all the priests, “ripe for the harvest , and red 
for the winepress A 


PREFACE. 


XI 


14. Then the earth shall plunge into the seething 
fires of a central sun, u the elements shall melt with fer¬ 
vent heat,” u the earth shall be broken down/ it shall be 
clean dissolved” Every sleeping energy, every physical 
and mental force hid away in earth and rock, shall spring 
to life ; every moral and intellectual principle, the camera 
plates of life and character, dust, with its engraven 
images of thought and love slumbering in the bosom of 
the world, shall be called up ; the great charnel house of 
the earth itself shall spring again to life, ‘ 6 the dead , small 
and great , shall stand before God” 

15. Such has been and will be the history of the 
world, and such has been and will be the history of every 
planet, and of every embryonic comet. They all repre¬ 
sent stages of development in the life of planets. To 
know the past and future of the earth is to read the past 
and future of all the worlds in the infinite expanse of 
heaven. 

16. This book will prove that the earth has revolved 
on other polar centers, with other tropics and other 
regions of ice-covered arctics ; that the change to her pres¬ 
ent position w r as sudden, overtaking the elephants of trop¬ 
ical Siberia in a single night, and preserving them in ice 
with the blast of frigid cold until this day, while glacial 
ages followed in the new tropics, by the melting of the 
ice of former poles. Such is the history of Utah and the 
ice origin of her salt seas. 

17. Science proves, and the Bible teaches, that man 
has inhabited this globe for a period of no less than five 
hundred thousand years ; that there have been four dis¬ 
tinct human epochs, separated by mighty convulsions or 
chasms, which have befallen the earth and devastated its 
life. The last human epoch we will call the Age of Let- 


Xll 


PREFACE. 


ters, comprising the period of all hieroglyphics and 
written symbols, which embraces the Age of Iron ; prior 
to which time there was a distinct human Age of Bronze, , 
back of which a distinct human Age of Stone, and still 
earlier, the half-human Age of Cave-dwellers. 

18. This work will be an arcanum of nature in its 
varied departments, creating a new science out of the 
sciences, forming of classified facts a geometric whole. 
The human inception, the human embryo, antenatal influ¬ 
ences, and the influences of society, will be embraced in 
their proper places. A new light will be thrown on 
existence itself. Human thought in its relation to divine 
thought, life and death, will be contemplated. 

19. The book will prove man an immortal being, and 
in gates ajar show an inkling of a glory beyond the stars. 

The Author. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER I. 

The rook on which we build — Fundamental principles 

UNDERLYING ALL EXISTENCE-ETERNAL ATTRIBUTES- 

Matter, Force, Causation. 

Idealism and Materialism — God and the Universe — Divine thought 
manifest in the physical universe — Matter is eternal — Force is 
eternal — Change is eternal — Causation is eternal — Destiny in 
all things — God — Mind — Matter — Humanity. 

CHAPTER II. 

The perpetual creation — Dying and being born for¬ 
ever — Evolutions in General. 

Progression and Retrogression — Changes are eternal — The brain a 
grave — We subsist on death — Life and forms of life — Worlds 
and systems of worlds appearing and disappearing forever — 
Longfellow, Ingersoll — Eternity. 

CHAPTER III. 

History of the beginning of the creation of the 
heavens and the earth. 

Unconscious forces — Night of chaos — Matter diffused through space 
— Brooding consciousness — Gathering clouds of nebula — Com¬ 
bustion — Centers of fire — Motion — Comets — Embryonic suns 
— Central whirlpools of fire — An infinite number of comets 
and lesser worlds that have fallen into the sun ; his increasing 
fires — His light and heat brooding comets changing to planets 
—Falling at last into the sun — Our system — Other systems — 
All the stars. 


[ xiii ] 



XIV 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER IV. 

Meteors — Comets — Nebula — Zodiacal light — Au¬ 
rora Borealis — Food supply of forming worlds — 
A forest of growing worlds. 

Shooting stars, meteoric showers — Cosmic matter in the planetary 
spaces — Origin and destiny of comets — What they are — Nu¬ 
cleus and tail — Their elliptic motion — Rapid changes — Biela’s 
and Halley’s comets — Encke’s comet now changing to a world 
— Neptune born of the comet of 1770 — Other comets —Nebula 
in Canes Yanetaci — In Ursa Major — Herschel — Other nebula 
— Relation of meteors, northern lights, comets, and nebula 
— Spectroscopic analysis of them — The heavens compared to a 
forest with trees in all stages of development. 

CHAPTER V. 

Evolutions of the planets — Past, present, and future 
of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Ju¬ 
piter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune — Inhabitants of 

EACH EVOLVING WITH THE EVOLUTIONS OF THE PLANETS. 

Mercury the oldest planet of our system — Older planets that have 
fallen into the sun — Neptune a recent planet — Planets taking 
new positions nearer the sun — The seven creative days of Gen¬ 
esis — Seven outer circles around the sun — Seven ellipses of the 
earth falling to the sun — The earth’s orbit representing the 
seventh day of all planets — Slow condensation and continued 
creation of planets — Venus inhabited with beings higher than* 
man — External remote planets not inhabited — All the planets 
separately considered — Other systems — The infinite ocean of 
stars — Boundless theaters of life. 

CHAPTER VI. 

The sun in his cortege of planets — His past, present, 

AND FUTURE-OTHER SUNS. 


CONTENTS. 


XV 


Size and distance — Composition — Spots — Character — Light and 
heat His outer elements — His external, ethereal garb embrac¬ 
ing all the planets — We are in the arms of the sun — Our sun 
leaning against other suns — An infinite sea of suns. 

CHAPTER YII. 

The stars — Size — Distance — Humber — Composition 
— Character — Spectroscopic Analysis — The 
Milky Way — Other Milky Ways. 

Great changes taking place in the stars — The constellations — Cyg- 
nus — Cetus and Hydra — Single, double, and multiple stars — 
Evolutions, past and future — Infinitudes and eternities. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

History of the beginning of the creation of the earth. 

A profound of unconscious chaos—Gathering nebula clouds — 
Touched with light — Unconscious matter springs to conscious 
life — Our world a comet—Next a gaseous planet thirty thou¬ 
sand miles in diameter— Forming and falling of granite crystals 
— A central sea of boiling rock — The earth robed in a dark 
garment of vapors—“Roll on, Young World,” a poem — The 
oceans and hills — Bible quotations. 

CHAPTER IX. 

The great key — Sudden polar changes of the earth — 
Its crust broken like a crumbling shell — The 
Noachian Deluge — Cause of axial and orbital 
motion — Reasons why planets take new positions 
nearer the sun. 

The earth has three days, an axial day of twenty-four hours, an 
orbital day of one year, and an elliptic day of six hundred thou¬ 
sand years, terminating with a sudden polar change, and 
a new and nearer path around the sun — These are the seven 


XVI 


CONTENTS. 


days of Genesis — The flood — Noah’s ark — The United States 
before the flood, an ice-covered polar region — Utah and her 
salt beds — South America and the old equator — Siberia once a 
tropical clime — Frozen elephants with evidences of human civ¬ 
ilization — Key to geology — Key to Genesis — Key to mysteries. 

CHAPTER X. 

Chemical basis of life — Our material chemistry is 
God’s immaterial geometry. 

The infinitely great and the infinitely small — All life the antitype of 
environments — Crystallization — A complex crystal or ovum of 
life — Organic and vital chemistry — A universe within the atom 
— Every atom a living force — Affinities and repulsions — Males 
and females — The amalgamation and crossing of atoms — Pro¬ 
toplasm — The base of all life — Organization constitutes life 
— The more complex the organization, the higher the life. 

CHAPTER XI. 

Spontaneous life — Mold of corruption and maggot 
of decay — First forms of life on the globe. 

Minute forms of life which appear in fermented liquids — Bachteria 
— Malaria — Infusoria — Animalcula — Ditch-water and hay 
infusions — Parasites — Insectivora — Huxley, Tindall, St. Paul 
— The air we breath composed of living, solid particles — The 
first life of the globe — Sequences of evolving ages, this map 
of — Humanity. 


CHAPTER XII. 

Mechanics of life — The eye, ear, heart, and brain. 

Inorganic nature compared with living functions — Mastication — 
Absorption — Assimilation — Electricity — Heat — Light — Hy¬ 
draulics— Hydrostatics — Mechanics of the heart, brain, eye, 
and ear— Philosophy of muscular movements — Man a crystalli¬ 
zation— Man a vegetation — Man a machine — The in-dwelling 
of God — Finite and infinite thought. 




C0NTENT8. 


xvii 


CHAPTEE XIII. 

Introduction to geology — The earth a book. 

Mount Vesuvius — The Nile — Ripple marks in rock — Footsteps — 
Ruins that will be a million years hence — Ruins of the past — 
Bones and fossils —Skulls and skeletons — The earth a tomb 
— The world-book opened — Its tremendous record of the past 
— Its wonderful predictions of the almost infinite future. 


CHAPTER XIY. 

First day of the world’s history — Age of fire and 

FALLING GRANITE-PRESENT STATE OF THE PLANET 

Xeptune. 

The earth’s central core of fire — Volcanoes — Earthquakes — Early 
condition of the earth — A glowing nebula — Showers of rock 
crystals — Formation of granite—Ideal observations from the 
planet Saturn — The blazing world robed in blankets of vapor 
— Dividing the light from the darkness — Liquid sea of fire — 
The hollow deeps of Milton’s hell — Terrific turmoil in the 
molten flood — White hardening granite billows — A mantle of 
darkness against the sun — The planet Neptune. 

CHAPTER XV. 

Second day of the world’s history — Age of falling 
oceans — Creation of gneiss — A description which 
applies to the present condition of the planet 
Uranus. 

Vapors — Rain-storm — The struggle of fire and water — Boiling 
oceans — Crumbling granite — Forming gneiss — Slate — Gold, 
silver, and other metals — Terrific convulsions — Earthquakes 
— Volcanoes — Water-spout columns on the flood — Waters 
above and below the firmament — Water in the arms of fire — 
Final triumph of water — Out-pouring flood from clouds ten 
thousand miles in depth — The planet Uranus. 


CONTENTS. 


• • • 
XY111 


CHAPTER XYT. 

Third day of the earth’s history — Age of dawning 
life — Creation of marble — Reign of corals and 

SHELL-FISHES- A DESCRIPTION WHICH APPLIES TO THE 

PRESENT ON THE PLANET SATURN. 

Marble and other limestone formed from the crumbling debris of life 
— Earliest geological evidences of life in serpentine marble — 
Corals — Mollusks — Rhizopods, Ganoids, Trilobites — Great 
distortions and vast upheavals — Warm oceans — Dense atmos¬ 
phere — No sun, moon, or stars — No beasts of prey — No sing¬ 
ing birds — No forests of maple or pine—Axial and orbital 
changes — The planet Saturn. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Fourth day of the world's history — Age of coming 

BLUE AND BLAZING SUN-Era OF COAL-FORESTS AND 

REIGN OF FISHES- A DESCRIPTION WHICH APPLIES TO 

THE PRESENT ON THE PLANET JUPITER. 

Coal forests of the fourth day — Prodigious and wonderful vegetation 
feeding on the carboniferous air — Immense peat-beds — Crea¬ 
tion of coal — The clearing of the earth’s cloud-belt of dark, 
thickened air — Unveiling of the earth’s face naked to the stars 
— Sun and moon are seen like a fresh creation — The fishes of 

•4 

the carboniferous seas — It is the reign of fishes — The earth 
again changes her polar centers, and commences a new and 
nearer path around the sun — A telescope and the planet 
Jupiter. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Fifth day of the world’s history — Age of chaotic 

ABUNDANT LIFE-ReIGN OF REPTILES, OR ERA OF FOWL 

-NOW REPRESENTED BY THE PLANETS ASTEROIDS. 

The crust of the earth broken like a shell—Distorted by stupendous 
causes — New evidences of polar changes — Burial of the coal 
measures in broken strata, and by volcanic exudations — Evi- 


CONTENTS. 


XIX 


dencesof design — Upheaval of granite mountains—Iron, petro- 
■ leum — A new earth and a brighter sun — New conditions more 
favorable to life — Age of Reptiles — Abundant conglomerate 
creation — Struggles for existence — Bloody battles — The vice of 
nature’s moldings — The earth assumes again a new axis and a 
new orbit — The asteroids. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Sixth day of the world’s history — Age of changing 

SKELETON AND COMING BRAIN REIGN OF MAMMALS 

AND VARIED SPECIES-A DESCRIPTION WHICH APPLIES. 

TO THE PRESENT ON THE PLANET MARS. 

Origin of the species — Results of axial changes — Floods — Glacial 
epochs — A new map of the world — A new equator and a new 
temperate belt — The United States deep buried in arctic ice 
— Siberia, Alaska, and Greenland in the tropic and temperate 
belt—South America also in the north temperate zone—A 
brighter sun — Conditions favorable to a higher order of living 
beings — Metamorphoses of the types of life—Age of mam¬ 
mals, apes, monkeys, orangs, gorillas, chimpanzees, half 
human beasts, fur-covered savages — All nature pointing to the 
coming man — God said, ‘‘Let us make man”—Here in the 
middle of the sixth day prior to man’s creation, we drop the 
thread of history to consider subjects already implied. 

CHAPTER XX. 

Geologic summing up — Time is long — Glacial epochs 
— Agassiz, Owen, Hitchcock, Huxley, Darwin. 

Progressive record of geology — The immense periods of time required 
to form the strata of the earth compared to eternity — The slow 
work of present seas — Observations on the sea-shore — The 
wear and tear of elements — The world chiseled and changed — 
The sculptor still at work — Creation going on forever— Facts 
and inductions — Evidences of arctic glaciers in Africa, in Asia, 
in Australia, and in South America — The history of the world 
is a histone of great and magnificent changes. 


XX 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

Whirlwind and tempest of fire — Fall of comets and 

METEORIC STORMS-SODOM AND GOMORRAH. 

The down-pour of elements into the sun— Comets and meteors that 
have deluged the earth and added their substance to its strata — 
The old world with its Garden of Eden separated from the new 
by a flaming sword — Till and meteoric dust. 

• CHAPTER XXII. 

Biblical criticism — Antiquity of Egypt and India — 
The book of the dead — The Vedas — Adam the 

NAME OF A RACE. 

Methuselah was the oldest nation the world ever saw — The kingdom 
of Noah destroyed by flood and fire — Older Scriptures — The 
book of Jasher— Sacred books of Egypt and India — The say¬ 
ings of the Old Testament older than has been conceived — In it 
is the accumulated wisdom of antiquity — Inspiration and the 
sayings of savages — Cain and his wife — The rib story — The 
tower of Babel but a tradition of the Pyramids — The lost 
Atlantis — Ingersoll, Thomas Paine, Voltaire, Abraham, Moses 
— The Bible 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

Age of letters — Criticism of history — Morning of 
humanity’s manhood — The past forty thousand 

YEARS. 

The period since man first learned the use of iron and the use of 
symbols in hieroglyphics and writing — Ancient books and tra¬ 
ditions of China — Confucius, Moses, and Christ — The ten com¬ 
mandments written on ancient Chinese altars — Ancient books 
of Hindostan — The Dabastin — The ancient order of Mendicant 
Priests — Ancient books of other India — Ancient symbols of 
the cross in Egypt and in India — History has repeated itself — 
God has sent to the ages prophets — The Moslem guide — The 
Koran — Ancient Babylon and Nineveh — Pyramids of Egypt, 
South America, and Ohio — Other ruins, relics, and traditions 
of antiquity — The Deluge — Obelisks, Peru and Yucatan — 
Archaeology, Greece and Borne — Axial changes of the earth. 


CONTENTS. 


XXI 


CHAPTER XXIY. 

Humanity’s boyhood — Ancient Age of Bronze, eighty 

THOUSAND YEARS AGO. 

Ruins of ancient Swiss lake villages — The Mound-builders of North 
America — Ancient copper mines of Lake Superior, Mexico, and 
Bolivia — Ancient bronze instruments and implements of antiq¬ 
uity — A sameness whether obtained from excavations in Amer¬ 
ica, Europe, Asia, or Africa — Ideal description of this ancient 
people. 

CHAPTER XXY. 

Humanity’s babyhood — Ancient Age of Stone, two 

HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS AGO. 

Stone axes in immense numbers found almost everywhere in Europe 
in wells, mines, pits, and railway excavations — Fossil boat and 
harpoon of stone from the Grampian Hills — Bones, instru¬ 
ments, and relics of ancient savages — De Lesseps and the Suez 
canal across the delta of Egypt — Skulls and skeletons of a vast 
antiquity obtained from all quarters of the world — Ideal scenes 
and pictures of the people of the ancient stone age — Axial 
changes — We stand on a new earth under a new heaven. 


CHAPTER XXYI. 

Humanity’s birth — Ancient cave-dwellers, five hun¬ 
dred THOUSAND YEARS AGO-CONTINUATION OF THE 

HISTORY OF THE SIXTH DAY. 

Semi-human beings that have left their skulls and skeletons in caves 
— Ape-like but clearly human — Cave-dwellers of Europe, of 
England, France, and America — A comparative study of races 
— New Zealand savages, Bushmen, Indians, Negroes, Esqui¬ 
maux, Flatheads, Highheads, Roundheads, monkeys, apes, 
chimpanzees, orangs, and gorillas — Tippenard — Constad and 
Cromagnor races of a tremendous antiquity — Sinking of the 
skull at the frontal vault — Semi-human brutes —The carica¬ 
tures from which humanity came. - 


CONTENTS. 


xxii 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

Between two eternities. 

Illustrations— A mountain and a gulf — The building of the Brooklyn 
bridge — Digging the Hoosac tunnel— Looking two ways from 
the middle of the sixth day — The vale between two eternities. 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

General surveys of the laws of progression. 

Descent of man—Origin of the species — Crossings and amalgama¬ 
tions—Octoroons of the South—Negro kings of Egypt — The 
amalgamation of negro blood in Egypt — Crossings among 
Chinese, Indians, and Caucasians — Consanguinity the death 
of families and nations — The broad highway from nature up 
to man —Huxley, Herbert Spencer — The homogeneous and the 
heterogeneous — Nature aiming toward perfection in all the 
types of life — Mankind to be a homogeneous unity with one 
heart and one mind. 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

Life within the womb — Embryology. 

The world’s entire history is contained within the shut-up doors of 
thy mother’s womb — The evolutions of the human embryo 
repeat in miniature the evolutions in the history of the develop¬ 
ment of life on the globe —Stages of the human embryo — 
Stages of life in the past of our planet — Metamorphoses — 
Caterpillars — Butterflies— “Aladdin and his lamp” a compari¬ 
son — Aborted and atrophied organs — Embryos of frogs, 
lizards, and various animals — Miscarriages and abortions — A 
poem — Write them childless — Hen’s eggs — Tadpoles — In¬ 
ception of all life by division — Eve created from the rib of 
Adam — The eggs of all life. 

CHAPTER XXX. 

All forms of life but modifications of one plan — 
Brain the co-herald of God. 


CONTENTS. xxiii 

Comparative anatomy and botany—Animal and vegetable life com¬ 
pared— Compared with crystallization — Compared with the 
stars — Man and the animals closely related — Sensitive plants 
— The soul of flowers — A death-bed scene — Animals and the 
foliage in sympathy with man — Seeds and eggs — Whence 
their wonderful possibilities — Who tied up in the chaos of 
long ago the possibilities of this universe ? — Science widens 
the mystery —Who made God ? 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

Argument from surgery — Plasticity of flesh — Made- 
monsters — The eye. 

Made-monsters — Deformed children — False joints — Deformities in 
general — Skin-grafting — Manufacture of noses and lips — 
Amputations — The honey bee — Tailless dogs of Menominee — 
Negroes with tails — The born blind — The growth of eyes 
— Star-fishes — Eagle’s eye and the telescope — Whole clusters 
of eyes and clusters of teeth — Myeloid-tumors — Blind fish of 
the Mammoth Cave — All flesh but flesh — Flesh — Corruption 
and spirit — Life everlasting. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

Ante-natal influences — A mother’s transient thoughts 

PERMANENTLY EMBODIED IN HER CHILD. 

Love and parentage — Hereditary law — Birth-marks — Jacob’s 
calves — White polar animals— The Vermont mathematician — 
Dante, Napoleon — Roman and Grecian gods — The power of 
woman on the future character of our race. 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE HUMAN BRAIN AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF ITS PARTS- 

Craniology. 

Phrenology — Gall, Spurzheim, Comb, Tyndall, Fowler, and Wells — 
The brain the organ of the mind — Size a measure of power — 
Phrenological organs — Bumpology — Heads of bears, lions, 
tigers, and various animals — Heads of preachers and pugilists. 


Xxiv CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

Argument from the face — Physiognomy. 

How to read character in the face — Human and animal faces com¬ 
pared— The art of dissimulation — The facial angle — The 
forehead, nose, mouth, cheeks, chin, eyes, walk, manner, voice 
— All nature in harmony. 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

A mother’s love — Early influences — Sociology. 

Little children — The Flotsam and Jetsam — Oliver Twist — Two 
brothers — Jean Valjean — The divine love — The mother a 
creator, her love — Washington, Lincoln, and their mothers — 
All the mothers of the great and good — Why should the spirit 
of mortals be proud ? 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

Circumstances which make the man. 

Society — Wealth, poverty, virtue, crime — Newspapers, colleges, 
churches — A true man — The one perfect example on the 
sacred page. 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

Future of humanity on the earth — Prophecy of a 
million years — Present condition of the inhabit¬ 
ants OF THE PLANET VENUS. 

Venus — Her cities — Her monuments and temples — Her inventions 
— Her arts and sciences — Agriculture — Labor — Industry — 
Her social system — Government — Husband — Wife — Chil¬ 
dren — Home — Her high moral and intellectual state — A 
millennium of righteousness — Christ and his precepts — Uni¬ 
versal happiness — The earth’s humanity viewed from the stand¬ 
point of Venus — Caesar, Napoleon — The French Revolution 
— Waterloo, Sebastapol — Wolf, Cortez — The American Revo¬ 
lution— The great Rebellion — Mighty struggle of conflicting 


CONTENTS. 


XXV 


human elements — Leading up to higher things — Future of 
humanity on the earth — Polar changes — Destruction — Prog¬ 
ress — A glorious future — The earth will occupy the place of 
and be like Venus — Next of Mercury — She will at last fall 
into the sun — The coming brain and sinew. 

CHAPTER XXXVII.— Continued. 

Past and future of Jerusalem. 

Sieges of Jerusalem — The Crusades — Rebuilding of Jerusalem — 
Biblical prophecies pertaining to Jerusalem — Future polar 
changes of the earth—The Venic age or millennium. 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

God manifest in his universe — Mind and matter — 
Idealism. 

Idealism — Materialism — God’s thought is the universe — All human 
thought hid away in the depths of Divine thought — Dreams — 
Descartes, Spinoza — Berkeley — Hegel — Kant — Ideas alone 
exist — Finite and infinite thought — Eternity. 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

The future life — Gates ajar. 

Death — Other senses of the soul — Unfolding — The universe 
viewed as a point on the shore of an infinite sea of life — Other 
phases of God’s thought — Other mansions brighter and better 
beyond the veil. 

CHAPTER XL. 

Meditations in the night — God s thought and the 
gleam of human consciousness. 

Birth, growth, and death of worlds — The Milky M ay Heavens 
and hells — Wesley — Swedenborg — Channing — Man a small, 
a great being — Devils — Men — Angels — Seraphs Jacob s 

ladder —A higher life, a deeper love, a wider vision, and a 
grander glory. 


INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE. 

Author’s Portrait. Frontispiece . 

Comparative Sketch of the Planets ... 36 

The Hills.45 

The Foundering Bark. 53 

Dr. Hall in the Arctic Regions . . . . 71 

Bolides and Ruins. 77 

Encke’s Comet and Spiral Nebula .... 81 

Planets, Past and Future. 90 

A Scene on the Planet Mars.99 

Ideal Scene on the Planet Vesta . . . 103 

Midnight in the North.117 

Like a Mountain.125 

Niagara Falls.131 

Motion and Position of the Earth . . . 149 

Earth before the Deluge.163 

Eye, Ear, Heart, and Brain .... 182 

Ruins in the Pacific.191 

The Fiery Flood.* 197 

Inhabitants of the Asteroids.220 

Plesiosaurus and Pterodactyl . 223 

Megatherium and Mastodon.229 

Antediluvian Monsters.235 

The Glacial Epoch.243 

Dr. Franklin in the Arctic Regions . . . 251 

Egyptian Catacombs.267 

Building the Pyramids in Mexico . . . 283 

[ xxvi ] 



INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIONS. XXvii 

Ancient Hindoo Astronomy.293 

Cheops-and Cephron.303 

In God’s Eternity.315 

Back in a Tremendous Past .... 323 

Petrified Ancient Human Monster . . . 328 

Gorillas in Africa.337 

Comparative Skeletons.365 

Argument From Surgery.371 

Druid Gods.383 

Phrenological Organs.389 

William Shakespeare.395 

Man and the Animals.399 

Von Humboldt.403 

Children’s Ring.409 

Mother and Babe.415 

Confronting Death.421 

On the Planet Venus.431 

Own Vine and Fig-Tree.437 

Earth Viewed From Venus.443 

On the Planet Mercury.453 

Earth Falling into the Sun ..... 457 

Jerusalem.461 

Sennacherib Attacking Jerusalem .... 465 

Mirage Pictures.481 

Dream of Immortality.487 

Faith, Hope, and Charity.493 

Meditations in the Night.499 

Canopy of the Sky.507 

Vision of Immortality.519 


INTRODUCTION 


AND PLAN OF THIS WORK. 


Reason’s enthroned monument of majesty, 

Column of divinest essence, Eternal Truth ; 

On which, in varied degrees, the heart is founded, 
Assist me ; not for sordid pride or low ambition, 

In my self-imposed task of no common theme ; 

Daring lofty heights, to survey and contemplate 
Eternity’s page, and the Infinite plan. 

Now lost my soul a bird with wings outstretched wide 
Soaring, circling, dreaming, in immeasurable space ; 
Delving into deep, unknown, unfathomed seas ; 

Of times that have been, of times and things to be ; 
Sing; a thousand strings engage in song of science ; 

The strain unfolding, tell the story of every star; 

Ring out the world’s eternal history; fill the page 
Of each mighty age, since order from chaos began. 

Sing a perpetual creation, eternal forces ; 

Forests of growing, changing, dissolving worlds. 

Explore the silent, vast abyss of nascent space, 

Where shades brood nebula, and nebula fires 
Plunging athwart the sky. Ride Orphean comets 
Through succeeding changes, for cycles of ages, 

To rounded, chaotic, gaseous planets; 

Globes of flame, robed in dark mantles of vapor, 
Revolving as they oscillate around the sun, 

Like Encke’s comet, now changing to a world ; 

Or like Neptune, full-fledged in swaddling clothes ; 

[ xxviii ] 



INTRODUCTION. 


XXIX 


Last bom of planets from fire and wandering space. 
Commencing her course in the vanguard of worlds ; 
Treading, each, slow circling paths towards the sun ; 
Progressing, as they nestle closer to his bosom, 

And receive his inspiration, heat, light, and life. 

Sing seven -worlds, forming circles around the sun ; 
Seven ellipses of the earth falling to the sun ; 

Seven polar changes ; seven creative da} T s : 

Six ages past, this the seventh ; two days to come : 

Two circles within, between the earth and sun : 

In all, nine orbital circles around the sun : 

Nine orbital ages : nine metamorphic changes : 

Nine epochs of all planets approaching the sun : 

Nine stages in the history of all planets, 

From fire to form, from form to fire, from comet to sun. 
The planet Neptune in the remote, far-off circle ; 

Nearer, in succession, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, 

Asteroids, Mars, and seventh in place the earth, 

A r enus eighth, and Mercury ninth, near the sun : 

All revolving, circling, falling into the sun. 

Take thy flight backward in the eternities, 

Into the chaos and cosmos of the dawning world ; 

Live again elemental war with fire and water, 

Meteoric storms and the earth’s forming shell, 

When the heights poured out granite crystals, 

Like fire-flies falling from the astonished sky; 

And formed a boiling globe of wave-dashed rock ; 

Resting on central pillars of diffusing fire: 

Then vapor wrapped the blazing world in soft embrace, 
And kissed her seething bosom with lips of moisture : 
Changing the molten red seas to snow-white granite; 

And covered it with oceans of cooling water, 

Created from falling tresses of its hair. 

Sing six creative ages, metamorphic changes, 

From chaos to form, in the history of the world ; 


XXX 


INTRODUCTION. 


The first of fire, the second of water, the third of life. 
Sing spontaneous first-germs of life on the globe, 
Oracles of progress through ages of long ago, 

When mollusca and corals were building limestone 
Out of the debris of their own dead skeletons. 

Or when, on the fourth day, life had climbed to fishes, 
And forests had absorbed black, carbon clouds, 
Unveiling the earth’s face, naked to the stars. 

Then the world took a nearer path around the sun, 
Causing an outbreak of abundant chaotic life; 

And reptiles, springing from fishes, covered the earth, 
And fowl filled “the open firmament of heaven.’' 

And the unbalanced earth again took new poles, 
Breaking its rock foundations, like a crumbling crust, 
And assumed a new and nearer path around the sun ; 
Mingling the abundant chaos of life with glaciers, 
Gkwsers, changing seasons, and new conditions; 
Evolving on the fifth day numerous species, 

Mastodons, monkeys : until, on the sixth day 
Man makes the rising prophecy intelligible, 

Hiding from savage beasts in caves and fens. 

Sing how man arose, in painful, progressive steps, 
From brute to bearing erect, and heavenward glance ; 
Slow learning the use of fire, emerging from caves ; 
Leaving scattered symbols of a history, 

Reaching back five hundred thousand years : 

Since which, North America has been buried in ice, 
And Siberia a tropical, peopled clime; 

For the earth rolled on other axial centers, 

In another orbit, more remote around the sun. 

Let symbols reveal a human lost age of stone, 

And bronze implements in mounds and ruins 
Tell the story of a long enduring copper age, 

Once upon a time before the Noachian Deluge ; 

When our world reached an impossible ellipse, 
Overturning on itself from pole to pole, 


INTRODUCTION. 


XXXI 


Establishing new motion, and path around the sun ; 
Beginning the present age of hieroglyphics, 

Or letters, in the dawn of ancient Eg} T pt, 

Approximately, thirty thousand years ago. 

Sing history, traditions, religions, wars, 

Wisdom of antiquity, great men and minds. 

Sing governments, society, family, home, 

Mysteries enshrouding the human nature, 

Post-natal influences, life hid within the womb : — 

A history in miniature of all the ages : 

Letting no subject pertaining to life’s mystery 
Escape its proper place in the harmonium song. 

Sing how science confirms the Christian religion , 

But leave untouched the sacred ground of its varied creeds. 

Cast the horoscope of mighty ages yet to come : — 

A millennium of righteousness, covering the world, 

When the earth shall take new positions in the heavens. 
Nearer the sun; plunging at last into his bosom. 

Ring out the birth and histoiy of the planets, 

Their progressive creations and evolving life, 

Rising higher in the scale, as they approach the sun; 
Their present conditions and strange inhabitants. 

First, and most remote from the sun, chaotic Neptune 
With core of fire enclosed in cloud-belt vapors, 

Late product of evolving, cometous, fiery car; 

Next Uranus, with cooling shell and forming granite, 
Veiled in gauze and draped with boiling waters ; 

Saturn next, with high, uplifted, volcanic rocks, 

And life of oceans, corals, and shell fishes, 

Dressed in thick vapors, and dark carbon clouds, 

With superabundant rings and bright folding lace; 

Then the planet Jupiter, with swimming fishes, 

In endless shoals, filling her mighty oceans, 

And coal-forming forests, covering the landscape, 


XXX11 


INTRODUCTION. 


Still draped in dark moisture and carbon vapors, 

Fast fading gown of primitive, nebular days. 

Nearer the earth, asteroids, with strange reptiles 
Uncovered to the light of the sun, moon, and stars, 

And winged fowl, ftying in the ethereal air. 

Mars next, closer on the earth, and resembling our world, 
With picturesque scenery, and fierce animals, 
Pterodactyles, mastodons, and monkeys, 

Half-animal, half-human, fur-covered savages, 

Struggling slowty upward, on the threshold of mind, 

To a knowledge of right and wrong : divinest image. 

Next in place the earth : age of man and reign of reason. 
Then in order lovely Venus, closer on the sun, 

Perhaps a world of ever-changing fiowers; 

Star of sweetest music, nurse of science and art, 

Bliss of human harmony, one universal joy; 

Disciples, in truth, of that meek and holy love, 

Dawning on the earth, from the night of Calvary’s hill. 
Last, Mercury’s more exceeding weight of glory, 
Sarcophagus of purified, slow, circling ages, 

On the border-land of final resurrection, 

Soon to plunge into judgment, and the abyss of fire, 
When “the elements shall melt with fervent heat.” 

And thou, 0 sun! great source of light, life, and love; — 
Father of worlds; majestic! almost eternal! 

We crave to know thy beginning and thy ending; 

For in all the glory and vastness of thy splendor, 

There was a period ere thou hadst beginning, 

And a like period will remain when thou art gone ; 

0 sun, enchanting ! divine thing of divine thought; 
Splendor of life’s dream ! finite thing of finite thought; 
Thou art but a porch lamp to that infinity, 

Boundless in the mind, boundless in every atom ; 
Memories of thee will hang in highest heaven, 

Thy blazing shield, when thou art gone forever, 

And light landscapes with pictures of thy beauty, 


INTRODUCTION. XXxiii 

When time, enchanted by thy tread, shall be no more. 

O sun ! diffuse with waving tresses of thy light, 

Thine eternal elements into boundless space, 

Take down thy torch fading from the sky, 

And brood again infancy of time, and of days ; 

For immortality tied up in the soul of things 
Has mirrored all thy pictures in eternity, 

Has eclipsed thy glory, and thy world-creations, 

With mirages more enduring and grander than thine, 

And left thee, 0 sun ! with thy many-colored rainbows, 
Stranded in the eye, and fading physical senses ; 

While never-dying thought and soul of man immortal, 
Lives on ; if perchance a better kingdom is within ; 
Creating worlds where skies flash brighter suns, 

Where shades never come and darkness cannot enter. 

Roll on, 0 sun ! tread stately your shining course, 

Finish the C 3 r cles of slow circling ages ; 

And when brooding worlds, in cortege and car of thought, 
Have all been gathered to thy paternal bosom, 

And wrapped in the drapery of thy crimson couch ; 

Lying down on Infinity’s Holy Mountain, 

With book of time for thy subject meditations, 

And eternity for thy pillow, — dream dreams, 

And think visions; not of fleeting sinful life, 

But of glorious new creations, infinite and eternal. 

Make the song a chart and compass of eternity. 

Sing universal order and destiny, alike 
Of systems, suns, worlds, races, or of man. 

Let meteors and the Aurora Borealis, 

Satellites, and infinitely distant stars, 

Ring out echoes in the completed, rounded song. 

Words terse with meaning and nectar of living fire, 
Jewels of thought, from eveiy land and every age, 

Newly chiseled, polished, arranged, and set, 

In a small diadem and short modulated song. 

Sing nature decked with smiles, wreathing the tomb, 


o 

O 


XXXIV 


INTRODUCTION. 


Divinely set, with flowers in darkness and tears, 

Birds in clouds, and angels above distresses. 

Raise to lofty eminence integrity, charity, 

Friendship, love, and every virtue its own reward. 

Sing human birth and being, death and destiny 
In gates ajar, of a bright immortality ; 

Or should, broken seals, the book display 
Revelations of God, delight thee more; 

Sing here thy new enchanting strain, thy grandest song. 
Make the book a music so simple that all may drink 
Its pure language, and read it like a talisman of love. 

Thou didst fill Homer and Virgil’s golden harps, 

And grandly enchanting, prompt Milton’s lofty strain. 
Thou didst enlighten the mind of Galileo, 

Unveiling above him thy parchment scroll of stars. 

The earth confessed hidden fountains of thy truth, 

When rocks, to man, told their story of every age: 

Thine was the truth, and thine the eternal flaming fire 
Of prophet, seer, or sage, in every land, by every tongue. 
Thou didst inspire the eternal ten commandments, 

In him who taught Israel’s sons, or Egj'pt’s seed, 

How the heavens and earth rose out of chaos. 

The temple of thy choice, before enameled gold, 

Or towering spire, is the upright heart and pure : 

Cleanse me from thought too low and base ; teach rectitude, 
Wisdom, and guide my erring pen, the eternal truth 
In words to trace, like arrows winged with fire : 

Showing forth in fixed and immutable destiny 
Majestic attributes of equity and merc}^: 

And in the heights and depths of the argument 
Vindicating devious wa}'S of God to man. 





* 




; 




































































[36] 


EVOLUTIONS OF THE PLANETS. 















































































































WAY-MARKS OF TWO ETERNITIES. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE ROCK ON WHICH WE BUILD - MATTER, FORCE, CHANGE, AND 
CAUSATION—THE ETERNAL ATTRIBUTES. 

Science has applied the term “matter” to all things 
which can affect the human senses, or act, or be acted on, 
by force ; in short, to the elements which compose this 
universe. 

It does not at present concern us whether matter 
is a gross material substance, existing outside and in¬ 
dependent of all consciousness, or the actual manifes¬ 
tation of thought; as proclaimed in Berkeley’s “ideal 
philosophy. ” 

The things which we see, feel, and touch, which we 
can analyze, weigh, and measure ; viewed from the stand¬ 
point of a dream, are nevertheless realities: and these 
realities science calls “matter.” 

Philosophy, following in the line of Spinoza, Hegel, 
Kant, and Fichte, may yet demonstrate that matter is, 
after all, an apparition of human senses ; and all atoms 
the consciousness of certain forces, and of possibilities 
unknown to us, behind which may lie hidden infinities ; 
and that this sublime universe is simply and grandly a 
thought manifestation, displaying through finite human 
senses, finite phases of its consciousness in human 

[ 37 ] 



38 


THE ROCK ON WHICH WE BUILD. 


thought; a thought creation, or consciousness, divine if 
you please, clothing and upholding every detail of this 
wondrous universe; and that the thought which sur¬ 
rounds and environs us, standing out in the objective, 
and clothed in reality, through our senses becomes our 
thought; ours finite, received from our surroundings, 
measured by our senses, and limited to our state and 
place. 

Whatever be the true explanation of the fundamental 
principles or essences of this universe, we shall use the 
accepted term “matter” as the name of cause, force, 
and all things which science can analyze, weigh, meas¬ 
ure, and contemplate. Therefore the causes, forces, and 
fundamental principles of this universe, are eternal. In 
other words, 

MATTER IS ETERNAL. 

Accepting our definition of matter, the above propo¬ 
sition becomes a self-evident truth, and to attempt its 
demonstration would be equivalent to the demonstration 
that God is eternal. 

In short, this volume will use the terms “ God ” and 
“matter” as antipodes, and.yet, in a philosophical sense, 
synonyms. 

God, the name given by theology,— a name haloed 
in mystery, from which by a chain of causes evolves 
nature and known phenomena. 

Matter, the name given by science as it examines the 
known, and traces a chain of causes back into mystery 
and mystery’s God. 

Philosophical synonyms ; the positive and the nega¬ 
tive, the known and the unknown ; two names for the 
sum total of this universe, viewed from the two sides of 
the infinite sea. 


MATTER DEFINED. 


39 


The light of inspiration halos the one ; it beholds 
nature'in her cloth of silver and gold, her dazzling lights 
all arrayed, her harps all tuned, enwrapped, enchanted, 
wonder, reverence ; this is God. 

The other a critic, crucible, retort, weights and 
measurements, chemistry, analysis, philosophy, the why 
and wherefore ; this is matter. 

To the one, the author of this volume grants power, 
honor, and glory, and bends with all the adoration the 
human heart can hold. To the other, he becomes a sub¬ 
missive slave, driven by storm and tempest in a restless 
sea of thought. But we have said that matter is eternal. 1 

If this is not true, then logic has no foundation, and 
all human reason is a fallacy. We reason only by anal¬ 
ogy and on the basis of analogy; I demand of him who 
believes this universe sprung from nothing, to create for 
me one iota of force, in the form of one atom of matter. 
Call up from nonentity, in a vacuum, and absolutely out 

1 This work is not a pantheistic system. Pantheism limits God to nat¬ 
ure, and confines him within the physical universe, or to that portion of the 
universe which is proclaimed through human senses. 

It is true that the physical universe is a phase of divine thought, the 
outward manifestation of God to his finite creatures, on whose existence it 
depends, in whom we live , move , and have our being. Pantheism, however, pre¬ 
scribes boundaries to the divine existence, and limits God to nature, or that 
part of nature which the human senses perceive. 

Pantheism makes the Infinite a finite being, sustaining by his thought 
or consciousness that portion only of the universe which finite human beings 
can conceive. Pantheism says of the rocks and of the trees, of the oceans 
and of the stars, this, and this only is God. 

Correct logic, however, proclaims from the very antipodes of limited 
finite senses, the existence of an Unlimited, an Omniscient, an Infinite — 
the universe, therefore, which we perceive is but a finite phase of God’s 
thought, presented to finite beings through finite eyes, finite ears, and finite 
physical senses. 

He is as high above the stars as the heavens are high above the earth. 
He is as infinitely above, beneath, and beyond nature as the blue ethereal 


40 


THE ROCK ON WHICH WE BUILD. 


of nothing, one solitary atom of matter, and I will grant 
that you have proven by the analogy that other atoms 
sprung from nothing, that all atoms sprung from noth¬ 
ing, that the universe sprung from nothing, without cause 
or force. 

Until then, the creation of something from nothing 
has no analogy. It is foreign to human reason, human 
observation, and at best but a dream of the imagination, 
contradicted by every source from which human reason 
makes deductions. 

Logic will carry us further in the analytic syllogism ; 
that which by its nature is unchangeable to-day, is un¬ 
changeable forever ; and that which changes or is change¬ 
able to-day, is changeable and will change forever. 

The whole panorama of this universe is a perpetual 
succession of changes — birth, death, and resurrection ; but 
there is no annihilation ; the fundamental constitution of 
matter remains eternal. Its form changes, it may become 
gaseous, liquid, or solid ; it may unite in new combina¬ 
tions, and display properties which it did not previously 
manifest, but it is never destroyed. 

In the great laboratory of nature, the process of 
change goes on forever ; wear and tear, growth and decay, 

vault is above and beyond us. He is as far beyond the perception of human 
sense or the conception of human thought as infinity is beyond finitude. 

Above, around, and within this universe, there are other universes, 
other phases of God’s thought, which we cannot perceive or conceive ; we 
are finite, he is infinite. There are other universes, mansions of the infinite 
God unknown and unknowable to human sense or human thought ; com¬ 
pared with the universe made evident through human senses to human 
thought, they are as the ratio of infinity to finitude, as the ratio of eternity to 
one moment of time ; perhaps God has a universe as extensive and wondrous 
as ours within every atom. 

Being above all beings, whom 
We call God, and know no more. 


FORCE IS ETERNAL. 


41 


dissolution by water and combustion by fire,— a thou¬ 
sand varied forces dissolving and reproducing in count¬ 
less varied forms; but the fundamental elements are 
never destroyed ; all these changes are only apparent in 
form and state. 

The phenomenon of the universe is a perpetual suc¬ 
cession of changes, but underlying it all are certain inde¬ 
structible and eternal principles, allied to the attributes 
of the eternal God. 

If we regard his attributes eternal, fixed, and un¬ 
changeable, they must act -in fixed and unchanging 
laws, eternally manifesting themselves in equally eternal 
forces, the physical manifestations of which science calls 
u matter.” 

We have demonstrated the eternality of matter, as 
absolutely as logic can make a demonstration. 

FORCE IS ETERNAL, 

because force is the manifestation of the properties of 
matter, inseparable from it. We know nothing of matter, 
save by its forces. Each atom, so called, might there¬ 
fore be regarded as a bundle of attributes, propensities, 
or impulses. Like human characters, acting variously 
in varied environments, atoms sometimes cling together 
by strong affinities, or leap apart with terrible force. Or, 
like the faculties of the human brain, atoms may remain 
dormant until the well-spring of their passion is touched 
by some peculiar influence, when suddenly tremendous 
forces are displayed. 

Force shows itself in countless forms, but it can 
neither be created nor destroyed. All the inventions 
which have sprung from the brain of man, have never 
created one iota of force. They all simply direct and 
utilize the elements; force is tied up in them all, and 


42 


THE ROCK ON WHICH WE BUILD. 


every chemical change, union, or disunion is the mani¬ 
festation of force. 

Carbon uniting with oxygen produces the phenomenon 
we call 44 fire;” at the touch of which water leaps into 
gas with a force sufficient to drive the locomotive on its 
track, or turn countless wheels of human industry. Nor 
is one iota of force ever lost, however much its form may 
change. The forces tied up in coal, when consumed for 
purposes of heat, are not lost; they have simply united 
with the elements of air, and become a food supply for 
growing vegetation, stippling nature with green, and 
building up mighty forests of oak and pine. 

The majestic river flows onward to the ocean, 
absorbed by land and sun ; yet gathering clouds convey 
it back again to the valleys, where, uniting with carbon, 
sunlight, and elements of earth in growing vegetation, it 
becomes a food supply for animal tissue. Thus fire and 
the moving river, the sunbeam and the cloud, are seen 
again in feathered songsters, moving beasts, and in the 
restless flood of human thought and human action. 

On the principle that force is eternal, we find the 
splendid compensations which chain together the king¬ 
doms of nature. 

Behold above us in this blue ethereal* arch that wraps 
the world in splendor, countless millions of great suns, 
all in motion, interchanging forces, each with each, heat, 
light, electricity ; attracted and repelled ; related to each 
other like separate drops of water in the ebb and flow of 
the mighty sea. See our world revolving on its axis and 
oscillating around the sun ; impelled as by an omnipotent 
breath, wafting backward whole fleets of stars like ebbing 
waters. 


FORCE IS ETERNAL. 


43 


See our sun revolving on his axis, giving light and 
life to. a whole brood of worlds. See comets plunging 
through space with the rapidity of lightning, yet requir¬ 
ing hundreds of years to complete one revolution of their 
mighty orbits. See dancing meteors, and moving, mys¬ 
tic lights everywhere in this stellar sky. Look around on 
our world ; see the heaving bosom of seas, the ebb and 
flow of tides, the perpetual round of rivers, changing 
seasons, whirling winds, wearing waters, and consuming 
fires; earthquake, volcanoes, storm and tempest, sun¬ 
shine and shadow; behold on every hand the play of 
never-ending forces. 

How startling the every-day revelation of chemistry, 
as it discovers new forces tied up in matter and combina¬ 
tions of matter. 

Wonderful result, when by a union of two innocent 
substances, charcoal and saltpetre, gunpowder was in¬ 
vented ; the tremendous powers of which, guided by in¬ 
telligence, have changed the history of nations, and made 
for commerce and industry a new map. 

Wonderful discovery, when glycerine was obtained 
from the fatty tissue of the human body. Wonderful dis¬ 
covery, when nitric acid was obtained from its fibrous 
tissue ; more wonderful when, united, this new substance 
was found to be a terrific explosive, leaping into space to 
find new affinities. 

Wonderful the hidden forces of the food we absorb 
to-day ; wonderful the laboratory and transformation of 
that food when it becomes red blood; more wonderful 
the laboratory and transformation of that blood when it 
becomes passion, affection, thought, and action. Think 
of that laboratory in the language of Ingersoll, “Into 


44 


THE ROCK ON WHICH WE BUILD. 


which was put food, and which came out the divine 
tragedy of Hamlet.” 

We are in a universe of eternal forces, manifested in 
the phenomenon science calls “matter,” and in it all is 
proclaimed the principle that — 

CHANGES ARE ETERNAL. 

On every hand we are confronted with the phenom¬ 
ena of changes, unceasing as far as human experience 
can go; and these dynamic analogies demonstrate the 
eternality of change. 

Change is the order of the present, it has been the 
order of the past, it will be the order of the future. We 
observe everywhere birth and death, growth and decay, 
elements forever mingling, and forever separating; the 
homogeneous evolving the heterogeneous, and the het¬ 
erogeneous evolving the homogeneous; matter and force 
forever building up new combinations of beauty and of 
power, and as constantly dissolving. Sphinx-like from 
ashes arise new beauty and new life : the old is resur¬ 
rected in the new ; the past reappears in the present, 
clothed in new garbs of beauty and of glory. 

Yon sun, majestic! treads his mighty path-way, 
crosses our world, and paints the landscape with life 
and light; night comes apace, robed in blankets of 
azure, and decked with the Milky Way of shining stars ; 
days pile up years, and years file in single columns to their 
tomb ; the sun has brought with him a perpetual change 
of seasons; receding southward, frost and hoary winter 
lock all nature in ice and snow; the silvery moon takes 
various positions and complicates the infinite changes, in 
the relations of earth and sky. 

The whole aspect of our world is every day changing. 
















































CHANGES ARE ETERNAL. 


47 


Oceans are encroaching upon continents, and continents 
emerging from the seas ; waters are wearing away mount¬ 
ains, and mountains are being lifted by earthquakes and 
volcanoes to higher altitudes. Races appear and disap¬ 
pear. The tides of civilization ebb and flow. All things 
have a period of growth, reach a perihelion splendor, and 
then a night,— death and decay. And this is as true of 
worlds and systems of worlds, as of races or of man. 

These majestic systems in the stellar heavens must 
live out their age, grow venerable with years, and crum¬ 
ble back again into chaos ; but they will live again in a 
new garb of beauty and of glory. 

Phenomena are everywhere transient: there are no 
forms irrevocably fixed. 

“The hills, rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,” 

are constantly changing ; rock and mineral-bearing quartz 
are matters of growth by crystallization ; and the growth 
of mineral is as clearly demonstrated to-day as that of 
vegetation. 

Unlike the old philosophers who considered matter 
dead and only acting when acted on by external forces, 
we infer from observation that motion or change is its 
constituent nature. 

Nowhere in the mighty laboratory of creation is dis¬ 
covered inactivity, inertia, and death. Above us, around 
us, beneath us, are perpetual activities, unceasing muta¬ 
tions, eternal changes in matter. 

ALL MATTER IS IN MOTION. 

True, the ship is propelled by the wind, the engine 
by steam, and so on through the endless manifestations 
of force ; hence the old philosophers concluded that mat- 


48 


THE ROCK ON WHICH WE BUILD. 


ter possessed an inherent resistance to motion, which 
they called “inertia.” 

True, the rocky frame-work of the globe, on which 
we tread, has remained without perceptible change for 
ages; gravity, friction, affinity, and the opposition of sur¬ 
rounding forces has chained each atom to an apparently 
fixed position. 

It is not, however, the inherent nature of the rock to 
remain motionless, nor of its particles ; mighty forces are 
slumbering in its every atom, waiting only favorable 
opportunities, or the contact of other elements, to leap 
into terrific motion. Again: while it apparently slum¬ 
bers, changes are taking place in its internal arrange¬ 
ment, and in the constitution of its atoms. Clay and sand 
are hardening into rock, and rock itself decomposing,— 
changes slow, stealthy, yet subtle and sufficient in the 
lapse of time to change its whole character. Again: it 
is not motionless, time after time it has rolled round with 
the world, and oscillated around the sun. 

Therefore the power which wafts suns and worlds in 
their swift courses, must reside in themselves. This is 
the simple explanation of motion and change, perpetual 
and never-ceasing, observed everywhere in nature. 

Motion is written on our sun, and all his system of 
moving worlds; in the silent forces which bear on its 
Atlas shoulders this globe of ours, that scintillates in the 
stars, rolling them in their vast revolutions, flashing forth 
light like fire-flies in the depths of immensity. 

Motion belongs to matter ; this is the simple expla¬ 
nation of all the mutations of nature ; whether wafting 
great suns on their wings through space, thrilling atoms 
with life in chemical solution, or prompting the internal 
changes and varied movements of the living organism,— 


CAUSATION IS ETERNAL. 


49 


ever the same whether accumulating atoms into the for¬ 
mation and motion of the raindrop, or binding with iron 
hand world to world or sun to sun in the great net-work 
of solar and stellar systems. 

CAUSATION IS ETERNAL-FATALISM, NECESSITY-DESTINY IN 

THE MATERIAL, MENTAL, AND MORAL UNIVERSE. 

From a given cause the effect necessarily follows and 
vice versa / if no determinate cause be given, no effect 
can follow. 

That given causes produce given effects, is an axiom 
lying at the foundation of all human knowledge; and 
that the effect is the exact equivalent of the cause, and 
vice versa / the cause the precise measure of the effect, 
admits of no possible argument. And that every effect 
becomes in turn a cause, producing other effects, is also 
a self-evident truth, established by every fact of human 
experience. 

Deny who dares these axioms, for by your denial 
your universe becomes a universe of chance ; science goes 
out, wheels of industry stop, the mill turns backward 
and produces unexpected things, men feed on grass and 
their women conceive fabled monsters, while monkeys 
write heavy volumes of philosophy, 

“The sun wanders darkly in the ethereal sky,” 

old ocean becomes a slimy hell of snakes, mountains 
walk off on stilts, birds eat up the stars, the law of grav¬ 
ity repels, love and affection carry poisonous daggers of 
malice and hatred, and even anarchy and chaos groan 
and die : 

“ But this eternal blazon shall not be.” 

The eternal sequences of cause and effect are imperatively 
fixed in every phenomenon of this universe ; causation is 


50 


THE ROCK ON WHICH WE BUILD. 


king, law and order are his code ; fatalism is in his right 
hand, necessity in his left, and destiny is written on his 
forehead. 

Sequences follow of necessity ; all phenomena are 
the outgrowth of causes, and causes foreordain and deter¬ 
mine all effects. 

The mind can only conceive first causes in the sense 
of an eternal change of causes, or in the sense of eternal 
principles ; for when the mind conceives a thing as being 
the cause of itself, that thing is conceived to be eternal. 

Matter may change from a solid to a liquid, from 
liquid to gas, and show itself in endless varied forms, 
nevertheless matter is the cause of matter, and eternal. 
Reason, logic, every faculty of the mind, proclaims the 
eternality of causation, and that the universe is an endless 
chain of cause and effect. We may not understand all 
the details of sequences, but it is certain that causation 
reigns supreme in every phenomenon of the universe. 

Modern speculative philosophy, in the dazzling, 
silver-tipped pens of La Place, Comte, Heckle, Spencer, 
have been building a universe out of a boundless fog- 
bank of darkness, stillness, and death, sleeping uncon¬ 
scious in the gray abyss of a voiceless twilight, where, 
hitherto, no motion had been, no star had shone, and no 
life had lived. 

If there had been a time far back in the eternal ages, 
when the sum-total of the universe was nebulae, chaotic, 
voiceless, motionless, lifeless, silent, and still, there would 
have followed an eternity of silence and death, breathless, 
voiceless, motionless, and lifeless as the Sphinx; in 
which dismal night of monotone no moaning zephyrs or 
whispering requiems would have broken the sad expanse 
of silence and death, no phantom shadows could have 


CAUSATION IS ETERNAL. 


51 


gurgled forth a silent echo, speaking the epitaphs of 
eternal night; silence, stillness, and death would have 
sat in his pale shroud, the enthroned king of all eternity. 

But reasoning from a universe as it presents itself to 
our view,— a universe of force, motion, and causation, 
— all there is of logic and human reason proclaims that 
force, motion, and causation have been from everlasting 
to everlasting, the enthroned attributes of divinity, as 
eternal as his crown. 

The mind can no more conceive the beginning or 
end of cause and effect, than it can conceive the begin¬ 
ning or end of God ; they are co-eternal; causation is as 
fundamental a principle in this universe as that of time 
and space. 

Were it possible for causation to cease, that moment 
Deity would fall from his eternal throne, God and his 
whole shining universe would crumble together into the 
vortex of oblivion ; but in the immutability of cause and 
effect, we have the evidence of its permanence stamped 
with the seals of all that is eternal. All things chained 
fast in fate move on in their eternal wheels of sequence. 
Whatever is, has been, or will be, must be. 

Absolute necessity is written on God’s throne. It 
is stamped in his attributes, unswerving and inflexible ; 
in every abstract principle which we ascribe to Divinity ; 
in the eternal forces of justice, mercy, and love, which 
manifest themselves in eternal phenomena. 

If you call the attributes of God the cause of the 
universe, then their eternal activities dispel the possi¬ 
bility of a beginning to their manifestation in the forces 
which underlie nature as its cause. 

If it were possible for a human mind to understand 
all the causes and forces acting in the logic of coming 


52 


THE KOCK ON WHICH WE BUILD. 


events, the world would have a prophet whose predic¬ 
tions would be true. Already this prophetic vision in as¬ 
tronomy, predicting conjunctions and eclipses hundreds 
of years beforehand, would have startled people of early 
times. 

It is the province of medical science to examine 
diseases and predict beforehand the time for favorable 
changes, or count on its fingers the months or hours 
when death will occur. 

Man is every day extending the boundary of his 
knowledge and widening his capacity to look backward 
into the past, or forward into the future, through the des¬ 
tiny of sequences. 

A chain of cause and effect, fixed and imperative, 
reigns with despotic sway in every department of nature; 
it sinks the ship, though freighted with saints. The 
storm moves on, heedless of the foundering bark. It is 
the same to fire whether it burns living or dead matter; 
the same to gravity whether it brings the apple to the 
ground, or a human life falling to its death. 

Nature can be governed only by obeying her laws. 
Man is happy only when he conforms to the forces of 
nature. 

Jonathan Edwards, with the acumen of a master 
mind, seized upon the necessary fatalism of the forces of 
the universe, and constructed his theology of foreordina¬ 
tion ; and England’s poet philosopher, Alexander Pope, 
declared, u Whatever is, is right.” One fact is certain, 
whatever is, must be. And the same inexorable destiny 
which carries forward the panorama of the material world, 
reigns as imperative in the realm of human thought and 
human action. 


THE STORM MOVES ON, HEEDLESS OF THE FOUNDERING BARK. 



























































































































































































































































































































































































FREE WILL. 


55 


FREE WILL, MORAL RESPONSIBILITY, AND ACCOUNTABILITY. 

But man is free, and there sits enthroned in his brain 
a great u free will ”— free to act out his nature according 
to his reason and his propensities ; while his reason and 
his propensities, according to their environments, necessi¬ 
tate his every thought, word, and deed. 

The child comes into life the embodiment of certain 
hereditary laws ; deformed, diseased, perhaps blind ; or 
if forces over which it had no control had been more 
kind, beautifully formed, with high prospective face and 
brain ; the plan of life is fixed, the outline drawn, the 
stamp of destiny set. 

The influence of parentage ; a mother’s love, subtle 
as the stars, fixing destinies in heaven or hell ; early 
education, influences, environments,— all control, mold, 
and modify. Manhood finds character formed, seals of 
destiny fixed, and he is free. Free ; if incurable destiny 
has made his heart and brain a liot-bed of devilishness 
to think thoughts and do deeds of villainy and crime. 
Perchance manhood finds a noble soul impelled by a 
nature, a brain, and heart divine to feel and act the part 
of justice, mercy, and love. 

Like the magnetic needle trembling between various 
influences, man sometimes hesitates ; he is changeable, 
fickle, unstable ; but the stronger influences acting on 
his peculiar nature prevail, and he is free to do as he 
thinks, to act as he feels ; and these are the forces which 
determine his life and conduct. 

Men are always ready to give reasons for their acts, 
to point out motives which prompted given lines of con¬ 
duct, and these reasons, these motives, are the magnets 
which fated their actions. 


4 


THE HOCK ON WHICH WE BUILD. 


5G 


Yes ! the attributes of God are free to obey their 
fixed and implacable qualities. Yes ! the forces of nature 
are free to manifest their activities, fire, water, gravity, 
repulsion, light, electricity,— all are free to act according 
to their inflexible natures. Each element of the human 
mind is free — reverence, malice, selfishness, love, or 
hate,— all are free to act according to the measure of their 
existence in a given brain. And varied combinations of 
faculties and propensities in a given individual, produce 
according to environments given life and deed. 

Show me a man whose towering head and intelligent, 
sympathetic face speak the possession of predominant 
high and noble qualities, and I will predict for you his 
future life and conduct. 

Show me a man whose narrow, flat, receding, animal 
brain is a den where coil hissing, slimy serpents of lust 
and villainy, and I will predict for you the general out¬ 
line of his future life. 

But men are responsible for their acts, and account¬ 
able to God and nature for every thought and deed ; and 
fate has fixed a law forever rewarding virtue and what¬ 
ever is noble in human life, while pain and sorrow follow 
in the paths of vice and crime. 

Happy he whose heart, mind, and soul, whose inward 
impulse and whose outward influences, impel to paths of 
nobility, goodness, and sympathy. 

Unhappy he, on whose face, mind, and heart, God 
has written, “vile,” in whose brain coils perjury, and 
forked snakes of villainy and crime. 

How grand become the better social examples, with 
environments to save the tempted ! How grand become 
the churches by the halo of their sacred influences, shield- 


FREE WILL. 


57 


ing the weak, saving to nobility of life, to virtue and to 
God, the otherwise lost in vice and crime ! 

Hereditary law, a mother’s love, early influences, ed¬ 
ucation, and environments determine the heart and charac¬ 
ter of every man. The heart and character, with environ¬ 
ments, determine life and conduct. And given causes 
are followed by given results in human thought and life, 
with the same inexorable certainty as in the realm of the 
material universe. Cause and effect reign supreme. 

Think of it as we will, we are hedged in on every 
side by imperative necessity. The worm crawling at our 
feet, the world rolling in its orbit, or man grasping at the 
solution of mysteries, everything organic or inorganic, is 
driven on by destiny ; and the march of sequences is as 
immutable as the attributes of the eternal God. 

This work is based on the inflexible certainty of 
cause and effect; on the fatalistic chain of sequences, 
which have followed of necessity through past ages and 
past eternities, which must of necessity follow in coming 
ages and coming eternities. 

We plunge into the awful vortex, struggling by the 
lamp of causation to fathom the past and penetrate the 
future, noting, perchance, the obscured or shadowy head¬ 
lines in the history of the universe. 


THE WAY-MARKS OF TWO ETERNITIES. 


CHAPTER II. 


THE PERPETUAL CREATION — DYING AND BEING BORN FOREVER. 

The evolutions of nature appear sometimes progress¬ 
ive, sometimes retrogressive ; but in the sum total of 
tilings they are neither, progressive nor retrogressive. 
The progression of one phenomenon compels the retro¬ 
gression of another. 

Life is possible only amid death. We subsist on 
death. Strange as the paradox may sound, we could not 
live unless we died. The blood in our veins is a stream 
of red and white globules, each a world of organized life, 
as perfect as we ; this is the food that supplies the brain, 
where death takes place, where millions of red and white 
globules die, and their life leaps out in thought, affection, 
and volition. Every thought born of man springs from 
death ; the thoughts we are thinking, and the emotions 
we are feeling, leap out of this grave we call a brain. 
This map of humanity is the blood globules of an unseen 
life at the death of which leaps out judgment. 

“Whose restless iron tongue calls 
Daily for its millions at a meal.” 

Planets are the blood globules of the sun’s life, at 
the death of which, plunging into his bosom, they will 
replenish his source of heat and life, and be wafted back 
[ 58 ] 


59 


PERPETUAL CREATION. 

again to other planets, with other life, vivifying and re¬ 
newing them forever. 

The strata of the earth are as full of evidences of 
retrogression and extinction of races that have been, as 
are others of creation and progress. The apparent gain 
in nature of one phenomenon is counterbalanced in the 
loss of that from whence it derives its substance or 
power. 

To suppose that the creation has been evolved by a 
law of progress is equivalent to the supposition that the 
Infinite Will has been evolved by a law of progress. 
Such a law of progress would carry all things, in short, 
God, back to a beginning, and limit him in time and 
space. Yes ; admit such a law of creative progression, 
and the mind goes back to annihilation, and God and his 
universe fall together into absolute nonentity. What we 
call progression and retrogression are the simple sequences 
in an endless chain of cause and effect, producing new 
and constantly changing scenes. In the absolute, noth¬ 
ing is gained, nothing lost. 

How grand the conception that when ages and cycles 
of ages have come and gone ; when our world has grown 
old with years, and the tribes which inhabit her air, her 
seas, her hills, and her plains — 

“ Have laid them down in their last sleep,” 

and our earth has become a voiceless tomb of death ; 
when her venerable mountains, crowned with the weight 
of aeres, and her hills and her rocks melt with fervent 
heat; when eternal activities have scattered her ashes to 
the four winds of heaven, and primitive ethereal nebula 
absorbed her substances back into the elements of her 


60 


THE HOCK ON WHICH WE BUILD. 


birtli; — strong still in death, her eternal forces will be 
tied up in her ashes ; she will still live in the rich inherit¬ 
ance of all her past possibilities ; and when millions of 
new panoramas have been enacted in the evolutions of 
her future, and cycles of ages have come and gone, it 
still will be possible for the unfolding of a system like 
our own,— peopled with an order of beings, then as now, 

“With erect bearing and heavenward glance.” 

Matter may take new forms, assume new phenomena; 
but its forces and activities can never cease. 

The long ages since our sun and our system first 
began to form from the chaos of suns and systems which 
went before it, is as a day, a second of time, compared 
with the ages and cycles of ages which roll back into 
eternity ; in the which system after system of suns and 
universes have come and gone ; developed from chaos 
into order and beauty, lived out their age, and crumbled 
back again into the eternal attributes ; coming and going 
forever. 

Standing on the philosophy of the eternality of mat¬ 
ter, force, change, and causation ; of the eternality of 
God, with his attributes clothed in substance, and ani¬ 
mate with activity; what imagination can take in the 
past, go back into the eternities, contemplate other sys¬ 
tems and other suns, sublime beyond description, evolving 
from chaos to a perihelion splendor, and crumbling back 
again into the eternal mind and bosom of the elements, 
dying and being born forever ; appearing and disappear¬ 
ing like the foliage which clothes the landscape in suc¬ 
cessive summers, or the long train of generations in the 
parentage of living things ! 


BIRTH AND DEATH FOREVER. 


61 


“ Eternity, thou pleasing, dreadful thought, 

Through what variety of untried being, 

Through what new scenes and changes must we pass ! 
The wide, unbounded prospect lies before me, 

And this informs me, I shall never die. 

The soul secure, in her existence, smiles 
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point. 

The stars shall fade awav ; the sun himself 
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years ; 

But thou shalt flourish, unhurt amid the war of elements, 
The wreck of matter, or the crash of worlds.” 


CHAPTER III. 


OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE CREATION 
OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH. 

“In the beginning God created 
The heavens and the earth.” 

And now, reader, buckle on thy whole mental armor, 
and strive to get thee back, on the chimes of time, 
through eons of unnumbered ages, to a time prior to the 
earth’s formation, to a time anterior to the sun’s crea¬ 
tion ; and there in darkness and solitude, let the non- 
created mind contemplate the invisible universe. 

For there was a time, far back in the eternities, wdien 
in the language of Job,— 

“ He spreadeth out the sky 
Like a molten looking-glass,” 

when all the matter which now composes our system was 
chaotic ; 

“Without form and void, and darkness 
Was upon the face of the deep”— 

a darkness pregnant with the possibilities of existing 
suns, and a chaos in which lay nascent the dormant 
forces of present life and progress. 

Attraction, repulsion, affinities, and adhesion, with 
all the latent forces and active principles of matter, 
existed then as now, and elements, by chemical combus¬ 
tion, formed centers of motion ; while surrounding cosmic 
[621 


THE DAWNING CREATION. 


63 


matter was impelled to motion around central craters of 
fire. Combustion is nature’s method of all chemical 
change, union, or disunion of elements ; and photospheres 
of light and heat marked the beginnings of future suns. 

“His garments were warm, and the light of 
His clouds did shine. His going forth was 
From the ends of the heavens. There was 
Nothing hid from the heat thereof.” 

Motion is the sequence of combustion ; in short, combus¬ 
tion is motion and the destruction of inertia, and affinities 
and repulsions spring to the aid of combustion, establish¬ 
ing the order of motion, while momentum perpetuated 
rotary revolution. 

We observe around us, in miniature, the analogies of 
similar motion; the whirlpools of the sea; revolving 
cyclones; wheeling water-spouts lifting their aqueous 
tresses to the clouds ; the wheeling motion of liquids and 
gases escaping through openings ; the revolving eddies of 
clouds in the stillness of a summer’s day. He who has 
climbed the Rocky Mountains has seen, as I did, the 
sublime panorama, below, of the clouds, under the rays 
of the sun, building semi-globular monuments of revolv¬ 
ing peaks. 

Ages elapsed, and the great center of fire by its 
radiating heat and scintillating waves of motion, contin¬ 
ued to call up from its lethargy the slumbering ele¬ 
ments, producing strata of fire, with illuminated tresses 
extended outward like the elongated glare of comets, 
which in reality they were, falling towards the sun by 
gravity ; and becoming expanded by the increased heat 
driven outward again in a series of sharp ellipses around 
the great attracting crater of fire ; gradually assuming a 


04 


AN OUTLINE. 


more circular path, in accord with the ether currents of 
the revolving vortex of fire, destined at last to fall into its 
crater. 

Thus the first change in primitive matter, outward 
from a central sun, was the gathering into clouds of 
nebula; and nebula vitalized by the rays of the sun, 
became blazing comets ; while comets slowly wrapped 
their shrouds of gas and vapor around the heart of their 
fires, forming stupendous, chaotic planets. 


. “ By watering he weareth the thick cloud, 

He scattereth his bright cloud/’ 

and planets lived out their age, and fell at last into the 
vortex of fire. This process went on during infinite ages, 
forming numerous lesser worlds, each in turn plunging 
into the molten sea, building up a tremendous crater of 
heat and motion. 

Ages elapsed ; gathering in by attraction and assimi¬ 
lating by combustion, and our sun took form, majesty, 
and beauty ; and sent his light and heat far into space, 
imparting motion to the elements beyond. 

In a former chapter we have proven the eternality of 
force and causation ; and it does not much concern us 
whether rotary motion had been perpetuated through the 
ages of chaotic night, which separates the present from 
past systems ; whether that long nebulous night was a 
night of storm and tempest, in which mighty evolutions 
and dissolutions were at play, reducing to their primitive 
elements the last vestiges of former worlds ; and by the 
force of stupendous momentum, revolving currents forced 
the past into the present, and perpetuated the old order. 
It does not much concern us whether this was the origin 


THE DAWNING CREATION. 


6o 


of motion in our system ; or whether in that night of 
chaos, the activities of matter found an equilibrium in 
sleep ; in which inertia took the place of momentum, and 
a chain of causation, motionless and still, perpetuated 
force in the semblance of dead matter, ready to leap into 
stupendous motion when touched at the well-spring of its 
latent power. The solution of these problems is unessen¬ 
tial, and perhaps beyond the reach of human ken. We 
know, however, that force and causation are eternal; and 
this alone, in this place, is a sufficient explanation for the 
beginning of rotary motion in the creation. The sun 
revolved on his axis, and imparted motion to the ele¬ 
ments beyond. 

A maternal sun, first forming, gave life to comets ; 
and comets lived out the period of their changes, evolv¬ 
ing into planets; an infinite number of which have 
already gone over their whole evolutions ; changing from 
bulky, gaseous to dense, leaden planets, and fallen into 
the sun. 

That the planets were once stupendous cloud-banks 
of cometous matter, occupying a field equal to that of 
their present revolutions around the sun, is almost a mat¬ 
ter of demonstration. 

We shall show, when we come to deal with geology 
and chemistry, that the crust of our globe is the product 
of spent fires ; that the water of all the seas once existed 
in the primitive gases of hydrogen and oxygen ; the car¬ 
bon beds of the coal-fields in carbon gas ; and even the 
marble and granite were primitively an ethereal com¬ 
pound of gases. 

The globe itself hung suspended in blankets of ethe¬ 
real vapors, filling regions hundreds of thousands of 
miles in depth. 


66 


AN OUTLINE. 


Far back in the eternities, our whole system was a 
sea of ethereal vapors, the center of which was the sun’s 
present center, out of which has evolved the sun and all 
his planets. 

Combustion is the universal law of all chemical 
change ; whether it be the unfelt heat of the changes 
going on in the human organism ; the flame produced by 
a union of oxygen and hydrogen gases, resulting in the 
production of water; or the residual ashes of a forest 
on fire. 

That the substances of planets were gathered and 
condensed into single globes by the action of fire, is there¬ 
fore certain ; forming planets in the order of Mercury, 
Venus, outward to Uranus and Neptune. 

In confirmation of this position, it may not be out of 
place to state that the general law of planets is that those 
nearest the sun are the smallest and most dense, and 
that they increase in size and are more rarefied with the 
ratio of their distances from the sun. 

Again : the planets all rotate in one general direc¬ 
tion, a natural result of the motion imparted by the sun’s 
own primitive revolutions. The general ratio of distance 
is what we should expect, and it is important to know 
that astronomers predicted the existence of a planet in 
the gap between Mars and Jupiter, long before the aster¬ 
oids were discovered ; also Neptune, and calculated his 
distance from the sun before that body had been ob¬ 
served. 

The correspondences we have shown, clearly demon¬ 
strate a unity of origin, pointing back to a homogeneous 
relationship, and a similar birth. 

The history of the creation of our system is the his¬ 
tory of the creation of all systems; they have all had 


THE DAWNING CREATION. 


67 


periods of inception and growth ; they will reach matu¬ 
rity and crumble back into decay ; they are finite, and 
being finite, the period-of their existence is limited. 

Our world, far back in the infinite ages, hovered in 
the chaos of nebula, where — 

“ God in solitude sat brooding on the 
Vast abyss, and made it pregnant.” 

The world was conceived by the sun, lit up and impelled 
to motion — a comet; she next became a chaotic planet, 
wrapping the heart of fire in deep vapors. She has occu¬ 
pied the position of all the outer planets, and becoming 
more dense, will take the place of Yenus and Mercury, 
and finally fall into the sun ; perhaps to go out again in 
the form of light and heat into space ; evolving again 
zodiacal lights, the Aurora Borealis, nebula, comets, and 
other worlds of motion and of life. 

“ Deep in yonder shining Orion where my life 
Began to beat ; forward, forward, let us range ; 

Let the great world spin on forever 
Down the ringing grooves of change.” 


CHAPTER IV. 


WORLD-EMBRYOS—FOOD SUPPLY OF FORMING WORLDS —METE¬ 
ORS, COMETS, NEBULA, AURORA BOREALIS. 

“See, a star is falling, said the people, 

From the sky a star is falling.” 

Such is the language of the poet Longfellow in his 
“Hiawatha,” and Milton, also, in the fourth book of 
“Paradise Lost ” uses a similar metaphor : — 

“Thither came Uriel, gliding through the e'en 
On a sunbeam like a shooting star,” 

and the most ancient as well as modern writers not only 
give accurate descriptions of the brilliant phenomena 
known as shooting stars, but employ them as metaphors. 
Homer, in the fourth book of the Iliad, describing the 
descent of Minerva from the heights of Olympus, says : — 

“Like a star shot by the son of crafty Satan,” 

and Ossian, book the first, makes the bereaved Furgus to 
exclaim,— 

“And thou, Morna, loveliest of maidens, 

Plunged in darkness, like a shooting star.” 

Plutarch, in his life of Lucullus, describes how a battle 
between Lucullus in command of the Roman army, and 
Mithridates, was prevented by the heavens suddenly 
opening, and there falling to the ground a large burning 

[GSJ 


METEORS. 


69 


body, in shape like a barrel, and in color like incandes¬ 
cent silver. The two armies were overawed by this unex¬ 
pected occurrence, and each peaceably retired. 

Anaxagoras,, supposing these bodies fell from the 
sun, describes one larger than a chariot wheel. Pliny 
also describes a large one that fell in Gaul. 

A meteoric stone measured by Pallas in Siberia was 
estimated to weigh sixteen hundred weight; and another 
in Brazil weighed fourteen hundred weight; while one 
on the bank of the Plata weighed fourteen tons. 

In France there was a fall of meteoric stones in sixty 
different places, and Rambossom relates that in Leige 
over three thousand fell within a small compass. 

Fire-balls sometimes fall in such numbers as to pre¬ 
sent the appearance of meteoric showers. Professor 
Newton quotes the following from an ancient Arabian 
record : — 

“Stars fell hither and thither, and flew 
Against each other like swarms of locusts.” 

Humboldt describes a shower on a magnificent scale wit¬ 
nessed by him in the Andes on the night of November 
12, 1799. 

The number of meteors that fall through the earth’s 
atmosphere is often prodigious ; and during the great 
storm of shooting stars of November 12 and 13, 1847, it 
was absolutely impossible to count or even estimate their 
number, thousands illuminating the sky at the same time. 

A meteor'of unusual size and brilliancy on the even* 
ing of December 12, 1876, was witnessed by thousands of 
people as it passed over the States of Kansas, Missouri, 
Indiana, and Ohio at a height variously estimated. It 
was seen first in the western part of Kansas travelling 


TO 


WORLD EMBRYOS. 


eastward. In Missouri it began to explode, breaking 
into parts ; it continued through Illinois, Indiana, and 
Ohio, till it consisted of a large flock of fire-balls, chasing 
each other across the sky, and was accompanied by ter¬ 
rific explosions. 

The chemical analysis of many thousands of meteoric 
stones shows that they contain the common elements of 
the globe, and no substances foreign to it. 

Although these bodies catch fire when they strike the 
earth’s atmosphere, and are often consumed before reach¬ 
ing the earth, they do not originate in the air, but fall 
from regions of the heavens above and beyond ; they are 
without doubt the condensed product of nebular matter, 
the metallic remnant of the combustion of a cloud of gas. 
For it cannot be supposed that these fire-balls, which 
reach the earth as solid bodies of rock and metal, weigh¬ 
ing sometimes many tons, existed as such in their origi¬ 
nal state. 

The primitive condition of meteors is vapor, like the 
primitive condition of hailstones. The vapors, however, 
in which meteors originate are far above the atmosphere 
of the earth ; therefore every shooting star or meteoric 
stone represents a globe or cloud of gas, falling with ter¬ 
rible force upon our atmosphere, and through it, in a 
blaze of fire. The metallic ball which falls upon the 
earth is the unconsumed portion of original vapor. Nebu¬ 
lar bodies sometimes strike the atmosphere with terrific 
explosions, throwing fire-balls in a thousand diverging 
lines, like the radiation of a fan ; this phenomenon has 
been repeatedly witnessed, and the roar and concussion 
of the explosions heard and felt. We must therefore 
regard meteoric stones as the residual dross of a burning 
ball of nebula, like the ashes of all fire, falling red-hot. 










































































































METEORS. 


73 


and sometimes in a liquid ball of metallic substance upon 
the earth ; and meteors have been known to fall upon the 
earth in showers of dust. 

Extensive cloud-belts of cosmic matter fall with ter¬ 
rible velocity upon the earth’s atmosphere, moving some¬ 
times in another direction more rapidly than the earth 
itself. The Aurora Borealis is the magnetic manifesta¬ 
tion of extensive tracts of such mists, and it is not 
strange, when we consider the awful rapidity of the 
earth’s motion, that it appears to us like a rapid electric 
display. 

We are rotating with the earth at the terrible speed 
of two thousand miles an hour, and moving in almost 
lightning speed around the sun ; therefore the gossamer 
blankets of nebular substance suspended in the planetary 
spaces, or moving in like rapidity in other directions, 
give rise to the display of fluctuating rivers of gold, 
streaming prisms, lightning flashes, and swift-changing 
colors of the northern lights. Striking the earth’s at¬ 
mosphere, the Aurora Borealis often explodes, throwing 
down fire-balls and meteors in wild profusion. And it 
has been shown that the epochs of the Aurora Borealis 
wonderfully correspond with the periods of meteoric 
showers. 

Captain Hall, the arctic explorer, thus describes an 
Aurora Borealis witnessed by him in the polar regions : 
“ The rising arch every moment gave varied and magnifi¬ 
cent changes ; gradually it reached the zenith, when sud¬ 
denly rivers of molten gold shot across the heavens, 
rapidly changing to whirlpools and mighty cataracts, then 
flashed forth suddenly a thousand rainbows, while a num¬ 
ber of fire-balls fell during the display, and burst, throw¬ 
ing out prismatic scintillations.” 


n 


WORLD EMBRYOS. 


It is almost a matter of demonstration that extensive 
bodies of nebular matter in chaotic and disorganized 
masses, are moving through the planetary spaces between 
suns and systems ; the closer mists visible in the form of 
the Aurora Borealis, and the more condensed and exten¬ 
sive filling vast regions of space in the form of comets. 

The closer nebulous substance striking the earth’s 
atmosphere in detached fragments produces the phenome¬ 
non of shooting stars, while the dross of their explosions 
falls to the earth in meteoric stones. 

Meteoric showers are therefore caused by the earth 
plunging through extensive regions of chaotic nebula 
without beginning or end, wheeling in sharp ellipses 
around the sun, intersecting at various points the path of 
the earth. The earth plunging through these rivers, is 
struck by numerous cosmic globes, while the earth’s 
attractive force drags many others after it, causing them 
to revolve around the earth for some time like impercep¬ 
tible moons, until they fall upon its atmosphere in the 
form of shooting stars. 

The earth encounters one of these currents each 
November, and a shower of shooting stars which, in 
periods of every thirty-four years, becomes magnificently 
extensive. These facts prove the existence of a circle or 
river of meteors around the sun, the denser flood of 
which intersects the earth at intervals of thirty-four years. 

The asteroid belt of small planets is an illustration of 
a river of meteors. The asteroid planets are computed 
by the thousand, meteors by the hundreds of millions ; 
they have their orbits and regions of travel like the large 
planets, and the sun holds them and the giant Jupiter by 
the same power. 

Rambossom says, ‘ 4 The period of revolution, eccen¬ 
tricity of orbit, and position of perihelians of these 


THE COMETS. 


75 


meteoric storms, conform to the motion and course of 
comets,” and showers of meteors follow after Biela’s 
comet, as proven by the number of fire-balls the earth 
encounters crossing the path of this comet. Observation 
confirms numerous such instances, as if comets left a scat¬ 
tered debris of themselves behind. 

Comets must therefore be regarded as more con¬ 
densed oceans of unorganized nebula, containing the ele¬ 
ments of all planets in a chaotic condition. The sun shines 
upon and through comets reflecting various lights, while 
their own centers are undoubtedly seas of fire, wrapped 
in an ocean of nebula millions of miles in depth. In the 
fiery centers of comets rapid changes and terrible com¬ 
bustions are taking place, and chaos is struggling towards 
organization. With a central whirlpool of fire, the sur¬ 
rounding folds will in time wrap themselves around a 
central fiery core, pouring ashes into a central pot, to 
form the rock foundations of future planets. 

The tail of a comet seems to be perpetually in 
motion, continually fluctuating, and Lockyer saw in 
Coggie’s comet evidence of revolving motion. Olbers 
saw in a comet a sudden flash of light which vibrated 
through it, the tail appearing to lengthen and shorten. 

Father Secchi says, “The conviction can scarcely be 
resisted that the nuclei of comets not only emit their own 
light, but reflect the light of the sun. “ The tails of com¬ 
ets,” says Newton, “ are not permanent appendages, but 
rise in separate detached envelopes, like the ascending 
smoke of a steam-ship.” 

The position of the illumination which we recognize 
as the tail, is always away from the sun ; hence it has 
been inferred that the sun exerts a repulsive force upon 
it. It is not, however, the repulsion of the sun, but the 
mingled rays of his light, in unison with the comet’s 


WORLD EMBRYOS. 


76 

central fire, that illuminates with electric and phosphores¬ 
cent splendor only the side most remote from the sun, 
and beyond the comet’s nucleus. 

We conclude that comets are stupendous moving 
nebula, with revolving fiery condensation in the center, 
and radiating equally in all directions ; and that its light, 
with the light of the sun, makes visible to us only a line 
outward from the center and opposite the sun. 

Like the varied phases of the moon, the main body 
of the comet is hid from our observation, which probably 
fills nearly a sphere. 

On this hypothesis, we find a ready explanation of 
the changing and ever-varied aspect of comets. The cen¬ 
tral fiery nucleus is the crater of terrific convulsions and 
explosions, into which vortex surrounding matter is con¬ 
stantly plunging ; and anon converted into phosphores¬ 
cent vapor. 

A few comets seem to have a partial crust, obstruct¬ 
ing the radiation of their fires, and giving rise to a 
number of so-called tails ; or comets with two or more 
tails, may have two or more nuclei, as witnessed in 
double comets. The comet of 1870 divided into halves, 
and travelled apart a million and a half miles in five 
years. 

Another strong evidence that the nuclei of comets 
are the centers of radiating circles of matter, is presented 
in the fact that all comets, when approaching the sun, first 
become visible, shortly after the nucleus, in the form of a 
semicircle on the side toward the sun, giving rise to the 
erroneous belief that tails of comets are presented to 
the sun ; in a short time, however, as the comet grows 
brighter and larger, a tail develops on the opposite side ; 
while the first lines of illumination disappear. 


BOLIDES OBSERVED OVER THE RUINS OF KARNAK. [77] 




























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































THE COMETS. 


79 


\ A number of instances support the theory that 
comets may have become planets ; a remarkable case of 
this sort is afforded in the comet of 1770, visible to the 
naked eye for four months. Astronomers were surprised 
to find the period of its ellipse to be only five years ; it 
ought therefore to have appeared in 1776, and should 
have returned to its perihelion in all twenty times; but 
has never been seen since. Its history is this : approach¬ 
ing the sun from the stellar spaces, it passed near Jupiter 
in 1769, by whose attraction its orbit was changed to an 
ellipse of five years ; it made two revolutions around the 
sun, and has since disappeared from observation. While 
receding in broad day, Jupiter again affected the ellipse 
to such an extent that, lost to view, it may have set up an 
independent axial motion with a new and more circular 
orbit, exterior to Uranus, and discovered by Galla at Ber¬ 
lin on the 23rd of September, 1846, named and since 
known as the planet Neptune. We make this supposi¬ 
tion only in illustration of a theory. 

The existence of Neptune was previously predicted 
in the same year by M. La Varies, by indications drawn 
from disturbances in Uranus. The discovery of this 
planet as foretold encourages philosophy, in the language 
of Pliny, 4 4 To seek those eternal truths concealed behind 
the majesty of theories.” 

The comet of 1840, observed, in all, six times, was 
made out to have an ellipse of seven years. In 1846 it 
separated into two complete comets, which made their 
last visits in 1852. 

Although carefully looked for, these comets have not 
returned ; instead of the comet, however, we had a shower 
of meteors. The old orbit of the comet crossed the point 
of the earth’s intersection in September, 1872, while the 


80 


WORLD EMBRYOS. 


earth crossed the same point on November 27 . From 
these causes, a predicted shower of meteors was fulfilled 
to the letter. 

These two comets have disappeared perhaps forever, 
and it is not impossible that they may have attained the 
age of axial motion, and settled down as formal planets, 
among many thousand lesser bodies which have been 
counted in the asteroid belt. 

Encke’s comet is at the present time passing its tran¬ 
sitory stage from a comet to a planet, not only in form 
and external appearance, but in its motion, rapidly 
changing from an ellipse to a circle, and therefore from 
the natural orbit of a comet to a planet. The period of 
its revolutions around the sun was at one time four years, 
which period has been perceptibly diminishing with each 
revolution. The comet is a globular mass, shaped like 
an egg, with internal condensations increasing centrally 
to an opaque nucleus, similar to the shell of the earth. 
The aphelion of this comet is already less than a numbej 
of planets, and the length of its year less than the planet 
Mars. This comet is year by year and century by cent¬ 
ury assuming the form and stability, path and motion, of 
a true planet. 

Poison, in a paper read at the Academy De Science, 
at Paris, says: u This body ought to be regarded as a 
planet, but it is still classed with the comets, because of 
its diverse appearances, and the fact of its not being 
visible to us at all periods of its orbit.” 

The planet Saturn still possesses many of the exter¬ 
nal characteristics of a comet, surrounded as is the central 
core by a great cometous envelope, or fog banks of gas 
thousands of miles in depth ; extending even into stupen- 



Great Spiral Nebula and Encke’s Comet. The Earth as it was in its 

Early Embryotic Stages. [8i] 






































































WORLD COMETS. 


83 


dous surrounding rings of cometous matter, held outward 
from the body of the planet by the terrible rapidity of the 
revolving mass. Like the external drapery of comets, 
stars can be seen through all parts of Saturn’s rings, and 
through the borders of the planet itself. 

Our own world was once a body nearly if not quite 
as bulky as Saturn. And it is the history of all planets, 
including the history of the earth, as their fires go out 
and the surrounding nebula of gas and vapor crystal¬ 
lizes into a central solid core ; the carbonic acid gas into 
coal; oxygen and hydrogen into water and a stratum of 
pure air; and other condensations perfect it, building up 
the surface strata of soil, thus making their external 
circumferences smaller, will lessen accordingly the rapid¬ 
ity of their axial revolutions, and by their increasing 
density compel them to assume positions nearer and 
nearer the sun ; while new planets from in-coming comets 
will take their places. 

The motion of comets is due to their expansive 
nature under the rays of the sun, and to the rotary 
currents imparted by the rotary motion of suns. Ap¬ 
proaching the sun, they are expanded by his heat, and 
become lighter in reference to the ether in which they 
float, and therefore are driven outward, where cooled and 
condensed, they again plunge rapidly, in motion modified 
by the sun’s rotary currents towards him ; hence the 
motion of comets is always that of an ellipsis around the 
sun. The movements and motion of comets might be 
compared to a gigantic pendulum ; driven outward by the 
sun’s expanding power and called back again by their 
cooling contractions ; carried around the sun by his sur¬ 
rounding rotary currents. In chapter nine is an explana- 


84 


WORLD EMBRYOS. 


tion of the reason of the motions of all heavenly bodies, 
due to the expanding and contracting influences of 
the sun. 

When a comet has formed a central solid nucleus 
sufficiently fixed and stable and of sufficient dimensions 
to obstruct the sun’s rays, then continuous expansion of 
the surrounding atmosphere can occur only on the side 
towards the sun, and continuous contraction on the side 
opposite the sun ; this would cause a rotary motion of 
atmosphere around the solid nucleus, and with it a rotary 
motion of the nucleus itself. Axial motion would be 
established, and the comet would be a planet. 

This is precisely the history of the transition of 
comets to planets. Each and every planet was once a 
comet, but with the formation of a central solid nucleus 
it became a planet, began to revolve on a central axis 
with day and night thus established, and to continue in 
an orbit like Encke’s comet, less elliptic, and more circu¬ 
lar around the sun. Such is the destiny of comets, and 
such the history of every planet. 

Comets numerous as the fishes of the sea are the 
budding flowers, the embryos, of the infinite creation of 
future worlds ; in the end to mantle with life and love, 
and on their bosoms to animate the immortal possibilities 
of creatures in God’s image, capable of studying the 
mighty plan and adoring the Creator. 

If comets are actual bodies of cosmic matter, with 
central seas of furious flame, feeding their fires on neb¬ 
ula, and evolving central condensations, we ought to find 
still more attenuated substances in the heavens. 

The zodiacal light and the Aurora Borealis are 
almost ethereal folds of matter in the planetary spaces, 
encircling the sun, and wrapping him and his planets in 


AURORA BOREALIS. 


85 


downy robes and soft ethereal blankets and gauze of 
vapors. 

In this we behold the residual substances from which 
our system was formed, and like which far back in the 
eternities, the sun and all his planets filled the heavens 
with substance invisible. The zodiacal light and the 
Aurora Borealis are composed of extremely rarefied sub¬ 
stances, upon which comets still feed, replenishing the 
source of their fires, and drinking its substance into their 
own phosphorescent tresses ; thus preparing the elements 
to form rock and water, with atmospheric mantles, 
rounded into worlds, and to settle down as staid and 
formal daughters of the sun, moving with slow dignity 
around him, the choice of their affinities and attractions, 
by whose vivifying warmth they will move in a chain of 
ceaseless evolutions, evolving various types of life, to 
climb up and culminate in — 

A mysterious mankind, like a fire-breathing 
Host, plunging across the astonished world 
To the portals of a life beyond the tomb. 

Nebulas, presenting themselves in great numbers, 
have been perplexing problems to astronomers, some of 
which are visible to the naked eye. 

The great nebula near the multiple star Theta, is 
enveloped with a greenish white light; under the tele¬ 
scope it appears strangely like the head of a fish. 

A nebula described by Sir John Herschel, in the 
constellation Lyra, presents an appearance strikingly 
similar to Saturn’s rings ; surrounding a central nucleus, 
together appearing as if a gauze with luminous points had 
been stretched across the ring, and its borders fringed 
with light. 


86 


WORLD EMBRYOS. 


Near the star Gamma is seen an elliptic nebula, 
intersected with highly illuminated points, the brightest 
of which are in the poles of the ellipse. The nebula in 
Cannes Vanetaci presents the appearance of two globular 
clusters, surrounded by a ring at a considerable distance. 
The nebula in Ursa Major is circular, and shines with a 
bluish light. Nebulae have been variously classed and are 
observed in immense numbers. 

We can form some idea of the tremendously remote 
distance of these mighty oceans of unorganized matter, 
by watching the increasing smallness of comets, as they 
move away from our system in a direction towards them. 
The largest comet, even when viewed with the telescope, 
soon becomes a minute dot; the comet is still compara¬ 
tively near us, and the nebular oceans, even visible to the 
naked eye infinitely beyond. How immense, therefore, 
must be the remaining fields of chaos. It was formerly 
supposed that these distant nebular oceans were other 
Milky Ways, other universes of suns and systems in the 
immeasurable distance. Spectroscopic analysis, however, 
with its wonderful revelations of the elements of which 
remote bodies are formed, proves to the contrary, and 
astronomers are to-day unanimous in the conviction that 
nebulae are extensive fields of unorganized and chaotic 
matter. 

This system of suns of which ours is a part, compris¬ 
ing the Milky Way, is but the early dawn of creation. 
Organization and growth are day by day pushing them¬ 
selves into the remote boundaries of immensity. When 
we try to conceive the possibilities of a boundless eter¬ 
nity, what imagination can fathom the past, or take in the 
future of God’s creation ? 


NEBULA.. 


87 


Nebulae are most abundant out of, and remote from, 
the starry sky, in directions looking out into immensity 
two ways from the flat wheel of the Milky Way. The 
constellation Virgo is so rich in them that a portion of it 
has been called the nebulous region of Virgo. Not only 
is the Milky Way the freest from nebula, but the portions 
of the heavens farthest from it are the richest. 

Magnificent condensations and changes are taking 
place in various nebulae. Andromeda and Arago are 
sensibly changing their forms, also the very interior of 
the great nebula in Orion. Herschel, by watching the 
light passing through it, concluded that motion was tak¬ 
ing place in its depths ; the condensation of millions of 
miles would scarcely be apparent to us, in the immense 
distance; with the most powerful telescope it would 
appear as the thinnest line. 

When we look out into the heavens and contemplate 
these oceans of nebula ; comets in various transitional 
stages ; planets also in every stage of development, from 
the chaotic fog-banks of Neptune, to the hills, oceans, 
and snow-capped poles of Venus : beholding thus matter 
in every possible stage of organization and development; 
from the unorganized nebular seas, filling regions of 
space equal to our Milky Way ; the self-luminous vapor 
wrapping our system with the zodiacal light, and trailing 
the Aurora Borealis in giant folds through the planetary 
spaces; comets crossing the sky with their million miles 
of trailing gossamer, and still others with opaque bodies 
through which no star can be seen save in the outer 
edges, precisely as we see the stars through the external 
portions of the planet Saturn; with planets becoming 
more dense and earth-like with each step as they ap- 


88 


WORLD EMBRYOS. 


proach the earth, and still more dense like Mercury as 
they approach the sun ; beholding thus every possible 
stage of universe and world-development, the past and 
future of their histories become like the past and future 
of the histories of the separate trees in a forest. 

In a forest we observe; here, sprouts just opening; 
intervening saplings; trees in every stage of develop¬ 
ment, to hardy giants that have withstood the storm and 
blast of centuries ; are we not forced to the conclusion 
that the majestic tree was once an opening germinal bud? 
So with this forest of stars ; at a glance, from the divine 
thought of man he beholds the stages of development. 

WAY-MARKS OF TWO ETERNITIES. 








. 


. 












NEPTUNE 


2746 271000 

MILES 
FROM SUN 


©» URANUS 


I 753851000 

MILES 

FROM SUN J 


JUPITER 


5 th. Day 
jiSToBR OIDs® 
ooooo MILES~Fr, 


241000 00 ( 
MILES 
FROM SUN 


MART. 


&TH.P4 K 

766000000" 

M II- C S 

FROM SUN 


90000000 ' 

MILES 

\from sun 


VENUS 


MERCURY 


35400000 

MILE s / 

from SUN 


[90] 


THE PLANETS, PAST AND FUTURE. 





CHAPTER V. 


EVOLUTIONS OF THE PLANETS —THEIR PAST, PRESENT, AND FUT¬ 
URE—THE INHABITANTS OF EACH. 

“The heavens are the work of thy fingers ; 

All of them shall wax old like a garment, 

As a vesture shalt thou change them ; 

But thou shalt endure.” 

Let us assume, for the purpose of conveying a clear 
idea of a principle, that the nine planets of our system, 
having been evolved from comets, all began, commenc¬ 
ing with Mercury, as bulky nebular bodies, on the ex¬ 
treme outer confines of our system, near the present orbit 
of Neptune ; and that through the epochs of untold ages, 
they have been, step by step, assuming positions nearer 
and nearer the sun ; and with each successive involution, 
the old orbit has been re-occupied with the early chaotic 
nebula of all the planets, in succession, commencing with 
Mercury and ending with Neptune. 

And in conformity with the record of Genesis, let 
the orbit of Neptune represent the first day in the histo¬ 
ries of all the planets, Uranus the second day, Saturn the 
third day, Jupiter the fourth day, Asteroids the fifth day, 
Mars the sixth day, Earth the seventh day, Yenus the 
eighth day, and Mercury the ninth day. 

From the basis of this reasoning, it will appear that 
Mercury is the oldest planet of our system, having occu- 

[91] 


92 THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE PLANETS. 

pied, during the evolutions of her mighty history, the 
positions of all the planets; and perhaps witnessed the 
departure of still older sister planets, plunging into the 
sun ; and now she, herself, gray with age, and venerable 
with progress, occupies a position, like Moses, viewing 
from Nebo’s mountain her future eternal weight of glory 
in the radiating brightness and scintillating splendor of 
the sun, into which she must inevitably fall, to be fol¬ 
lowed in succeeding ages with each and all of her 
younger sisters; while comets one by one, assuming the 
garb of planets, take their places. Therefore a time will 
come when the earth, winding her way through eons of 
ages, shall have become — 

“ Ripe for the harvest and red for the wine-press ; 

And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle 
Upon the earth, and the earth was reaped. 

I saw a mountain, as it were, thrown into the sea, 

And a third part of the sun was smitten ; 

There was time no longer. Hear, O heaven ! 

And hear, O earth ! I have nourished and 
Brought up children, I will shake the heavens, 

And the earth shall remove out of her place ; 

The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, 

It shall be removed like a cottage ; 

The earth shall be broken down, 

It shall be clean dissolved.” 

Let us here lay down a positive and unerring rule, 
the principles of which we shall fully explain in chapter 
nine ; the distance of all planets from their sun is propor¬ 
tionate to the amount of their atmosphere, relative to the 
weight of the solid nucleus. 

The planets nearest the sun have relatively but little 
atmosphere, while the remote planets are composed 
mainly of nebulous or atmospheric matter. 


THE NINE SISTERS. 


93 


Therefore, if the planets have all evolved from com¬ 
ets— stupendous moving oceans of chemical elements, 
with a central nucleus of fire — thence to planets — at first 
great revolving chaotic bodies, with an incrusted core of 
fire — from which condition they are slowly crystallizing 
the surrounding mineral gases into rock and metal, their 
carbonic acid gases into coal, their vapors into oceans ; 
and otherwise converting their atmospheres into solid 
earth ; — then it follows that they must with such changes 
assume positions nearer and nearer the sun, and finally 
without atmospheres plunge into his bosom. 

We shall yet demonstrate beyond the cavil of argu¬ 
ment that the earth once occupied a position far more 
remote from the sun than at present, when she was in a 
chaotic state, a great, bulky cloud-bank of nebular mat¬ 
ter, nearly if not quite as large as Jupiter ; and that by 
successive condensations and contractions, her axial and 
orbital motions have changed accordingly ; and that she 
has by successive steps, covering infinite periods of time, 
taken positions nearer and nearer the sun, and this is true 
of all the planets ; they have all evolved from cometous 
nebula, coming in from the outer confines of our system, 
evolving step by step rock incrustations and solid shells, 
becoming smaller and more dense age by age, and taking 
positions nearer and nearer the sun. Venus, therefore, 
is the earth’s next older sister. 

“Smiling downward on this earthlier 
Earth of ours, 

Closer on the sun, perhaps a world of 
Ever changing flowers. 

Every tiger-madness muzzled, 

Every serpent-passion killed* 

Every grim ravine a garden, 

Every blazing desert tilled.” 


94 


THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE PLANETS. 


Beyond Yenus, and nearest of all the planets to the 
sun, comes Mercury. Mercury may be seen just after sun¬ 
set, and immediately before sunrise, according to the posi¬ 
tion she happens to occupy in her revolutions around the 
sun, in whose superior brightness she is lost in the day¬ 
time. She is two thousand nine hundred and fifty miles in 
diameter, and distant from the sun about forty times the 
sun’s diameter — thirty-seven million miles. The period 
of her day is slightly longer than the earth’s, rotating on 
her axis once every twenty-four hours and five and one- 
half minutes. Her year corresponds to three of our lunar 
months ; completing her revolution around the sun once 
in every eiglity-eight days. She is enveloped in an 
atmosphere, probably less and more ethereal than that of 
the earth’s. There are mountains on her surface eleven 
miles high, and the flattening of her poles, by centrifugal 
force, is plainly visible through the telescope. 

Yenus, next, is a body about the size of the earth, 
sixty-six million miles from the sun. Her day is 
twenty-three hours, twenty-one minutes, and nineteen 
seconds, and the period of her year is two hundred and 
twenty-five days. Yenus is the most beautiful and bril¬ 
liant of all the planets, and can often be seen during the 
day-time with the naked eye. Because of her superior 
brightness, she is known as the morning star, and when 
her revolutions carry her above the sun, as the evening 
star also. Oceans and continents with mountains twenty 
miles high, are plainly visible. The spectroscope has 
analyzed her atmosphere, which does not greatly differ 
from that which supports vegetable and animal life on 
our globe. 

It will not be out of place here to refer, shortly, to 
the character of the people which inhabit Yenus and 


MERCURY AND YENUS. 


95 


Mercury. But first let us answer the more general ques¬ 
tions, if planets are inhabited. We answer, yes, an 
affirmation which admits of no misgivings, and an affir¬ 
mation which every one who studies this volume must 
accept. For if we succeed in proving that life is a 
natural product of our own planet; that forces tied up in 
her elements become living forms, according to environ¬ 
ments ; in the air, water, or on land, amid arctic snows, 
or under the burning sun of the tropics, in dark caverns 
within the earth ; yea, within our own organizations, the 
exact antitype of the conditions which produce them ; if 
the earth is the mother of our life, if her blood flows in 
our veins, if we have inherited her forces and received 
from her our knowledge, by her diversified picture- 
paintings and multitudinous lessons surrounding us on 
every hand; — then it becomes self-evident that the 
planetary gardens in the heavens with soil, water, air, 
sunlight, and elements variously mingled, are of necessity 
theaters of life and animation. 

Again: if geology proves that life has progressed 
with the progress of the earth herself, climbing higher 
and higher with each new advantage, always responding 
to new and higher environments, in all the little or stu¬ 
pendous changes that the earth has seen, changing 
accordingly the whole plan and map of her living creat¬ 
ures ; and if Venus has travelled the whole progressive 
history of the earth and gone an added epoch beyond, we 
must infer that sentient, thinking, feeling beings have 
risen in mind and heart, in intellect and in morals, to a 
condition transcending all human conception. 

Venus is studded with continents, decked with lofty 

mountains and broad valleys, where flow majestic rivers 

onward to her oceans. Hills and dales, slopes and 

6 


96 


THE TAST AND FUTURE OF TIIE PLANETS. 


meadows, covered with majestic trees, and bright verd¬ 
ure, spangled with ever-changing flowers, impart their 
million colored shadings to all the landscape. 

Imagine the Swiss valleys with their torrents, their 
lakes, their meadows, their gardens, their groves and 
lawns, in the midst of a southern sea ; add to these the 
Loire hills, crowned with vines and fruit-trees, the trop¬ 
ical produce of the Moluccas and the bright-plumed birds 
of Java. Imagine the shores overshadowed with cocoa- 
trees, studded with oyster-beds, madrepores and corals 
growing, amidst perpetual summer, to the height of large 
trees in the bosom of the ocean, rising above the water at 
the ebbing of the tide, which lasts for twenty-five days, 
and harmonizing their scarlet and purple hues with the 
verdure of the palm-trees. And imagine, finally, cur¬ 
rents of transparent water which reflect the beautiful 
spectacles, ebbing and flowing from isle to isle with a 
flood of twelve days and a reflux of twelve nights, and 
even with all this you will have but a very faint idea of 
the landscape in Yenus. As the sun at the solstice rises 
more than seventy-one degrees above its equator, the pole 
which illuminates it possesses a temperature much milder 
than our spring. Though the nights have no moons to 
light them, Mercury, by close vicinity, and the earth, by 
reason of its size, are to Yenus more than equal to our 
moon. 

The inhabitants, about the size of ourselves, since 
they dwell on a planet of the same diameter, but in a 
more celestial zone, must devote their time to love, to the 
highest intellectual pursuits, to music and the arts, to 
religion, and the worship of their Creator. 

For an ideal description of the high civilization, 
architecture and agriculture, system of government, 


THE EARTH. 


97 


science, art, and the religion of the inhabitants of the 
planet Venus, read chapter thirty-seven of this book, a 
chapter predicting the future of humanity on the earth. 

And if Mercury represents still another and added 
epoch of history, looking back, perhaps, to her human 
age as we look back to our age of reptiles, then it follows 
that this bright star near the sun is two days, two epochs, 
two grand evolutions, beyond the earth ; two days, two 
cycles in the ages, nearer the goal of glory. 

Ours is an age of shadow, an epoch of transition, 
dim prophecies of what shall be. Venus is in the full 
tide of intellectual and moral human development; hers 
is an age of perfected humanity, prophesying ethereal 
spirit; and Mercury perhaps represents an age of celes¬ 
tial spirit-purity,— prophesying God. 

The earth is the next planet in the order of distance, 
ninety-five million miles from the sun. She is eight 
thousand miles in diameter, and is attended by one 
moon, a small body one fiftieth the size of the earth, two 
thousand miles in diameter, the sun-lit hemisphere of 
which does not exceed the size of South America. The 
moon is a barren volcanic waste, without oceans, rivers, 
or atmosphere,— 

A barren desert, lifeless plain, 

Where silence and sadness reign ; 

No heaving oceans, or breathing air 
Mantles thy bosom once so fair 
With life and love ; thy course is done. 

Thy story of animate ages run. 

Dead thou art, thy children dead. 

Entombed in one sad, rocky bed. 


Airless, waterless, motionless, lifeless ; the moon is car¬ 
ried by the ether currents imparted from the earth like a 


98 


THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE PLANETS. 


float in the wake of a ship ; as it were on the shoulder of 
the earth around the sun. 

The moon moves incessantly in a circle or re-entering 
curve within which is the earth. The term ‘ 4 duration of 
her sidereal revolution ” is used to describe the time which 
the moon takes to come back to a particular star. Early 
in the century the time was two thousand seven hundred 
and thirty-two days, a gradual decrease on all previous 
centuries since observation began, notably, by the Egyp¬ 
tian caliphs. The moon therefore must be getting nearer 
to us, and if the ratio continues for an infinite period, it 
will fall upon our globe. The moon is as surely falling 
to the earth, as the earth is surely falling to the sun ; and 
a time must inevitably come when the words of Isaiah 
shall be fulfilled — 

“ The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, 

And the light of the sun shall be sevenfold.” 

Or, in the words of John the revelator, looking down to 
the end of time, when the earth with its satellite shall 
have completed the stupendous changes of the future, and 
finished her course,— 

“ Babylon is fallen ; the great, the great; a woman 
Clothed in the sun, and the moon under her feet.” 

All moons may be regarded as dead worlds. As in 
human life there are premature deaths, so also of planets ; 
they evolve from comets forming atmospheres causing 
them to revolve with a life of their own ; but satellites 
having yielded up their moisture to the sun, become con¬ 
sequently airless and motionless. Falling into the wake 
or ether currents of other planets, they move around with 



IDEAL SCENE ON THE PLANET MARS 


[99] 









































































































































. 
























THE MOON. 


101 


them, made stable in their motion by attraction and 
momentum, until they fall together into the sun’s attract¬ 
ing fires. Chapter nine of this book contains an expla¬ 
nation of the cause of all axial and orbital motion of 
planets, by the action of the sun on their atmospheres*; 
moons are all without atmospheres, therefore lifeless and 
dead, having no motion of their own save that imparted 
to them by their planet. Many of them perhaps never 
developed any very high forms of life ; still their histo¬ 
ries began as the histories of all planets, until came 
absorption of atmosphere, and premature death. 

The moon shows clear evidence of geologic changes ; 
craters, within the base of former craters, and mountain 
peaks on the broad summits of former mountains, with 
valleys or dried-up water-courses. 

To the naked eye, we behold only the sun-lit portion 
of the moon’s hemisphere, hence according to the moon’s 
relative position around the earth, between our globe and 
the sun or in the opposite direction, is produced the 
phenomenon of the phases of the moon,— full, quarter, 
half-moon, etc. 

So also of tides, caused mainly by the moon’s attrac¬ 
tion, assisted and accelerated to their highest points, when 
the attraction of sun and moon are acting in unison upon 
the same side or sides of the earth at the same time. 

Mars, the fourth planet from the sun, and the first 
planet outward from the earth, is a body a little more 
than half the diameter of the earth. She is distant from 
the sun one hundred and forty million miles, and re¬ 
volves on her axis in twenty-four hours, thirty minutes, 
and twenty-one seconds. Her year is six hundred and 
eighty-seven days. Mars has not only land, water, and 
snow like the earth, but is enveloped in an atmosphere 


102 THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE PLANETS. 

with clouds and mists. To the naked eye, Mars is dis¬ 
tinguished by her fiery red light. Under the telescope, 
her waters appear of a greenish tinge, while her polar 
regions are draped in crystal white, contracting in her 
summer, and during her winter, like the earth, she 
extends a snow-covered landscape far into temperate 
zones. 

Mars, representing as she does the sixth day of the 
history of all planets, is inhabited by a type of beings 
similar in kind and characteristics with those which 
existed on the earth in the mammalian era, prior to the 
advent of civilized man. 

In her forests and tangled jungles roam mastodons, 
mammoths, and multitudinous diversified types of life, 
among which may be mentioned a great variety of orangs, 
monkeys, gorillas, apes, and chimpanzees of numerous 
types and species. 

And a few races of savage men, with jaws protruding 
and animal aspects, hide in caves and cliffs of the rocks, 
while here and there a few have climbed upward to con¬ 
siderable intellectual development, and have learned the 
use of rude stone implements. And clustering wooden 
huts, with stone barricades in isolated places, prophesy 
the beginning of human progress. 

Read chapter nineteen, “Sixth day of the world’s 
history,” and you will find described in detail the scenes 
and phenomena now taking place on the planet Mars. 
For according to our position, the planet Mars now repre¬ 
sents the period of the earth’s sixth day — the age of 
changing skeleton and coming brain. 

Next in order outward from the sun, we come to the 
asteroids, a belt of small bodies, the largest of which are 
Testa, Ceres, Pallas, and Juno, with one hundred and 


\ 



[103] 









































































































THE ASTEROIDS. 


105 


fifty others, that have been counted ; and it is estimated 
that one hundred and fifty thousand of these small bodies 
actually exist in the gap between Mars and Jupiter. 

The mean distance of these bodies is about three 
hundred million miles from the sun. They revolve in 
peculiar elliptic paths, rising and sinking from the general 
plane of planets. Yesta emits a bright light, and can be 
seen at night with the naked eye. 

We shall regard all these bodies in the same light, 
and belonging to the same day or age. Whether these 
bodies had a separate independent origin, which can 
scarcely be supposed, or are the product of the division 
of an early nebula or comets, that once circled on the 
confines of our system, like the comet of 1877, divid¬ 
ing with many nuclei of fire, into many separate bodies, 
finally filling its path around the sun with the early 
embryos of these small worlds, or whether they are the 
product of a swarm of small comets; they are so similar 
in every characteristic, that we shall consider them in the 
sense of one pianet, representing the fifth day of the 
history of planets. 

They represent the reptilian age, the age of abun¬ 
dant chaotic life. Reptiles fill the marshes, lakes, and 
swamps, and winged fowl appear in the ethereal air — 

“ Which the waters brought forth abundantly.” 

Read the eighteenth chapter of this book, “ The age 
of chaotic life,” and you will find described in detail the 
present existing scenes and phenomena now being enacted 
on the asteroids, repeating as they do the fifth day of the 
world’s history. 

Going outward still farther, and leaving the sun four 
hundred and ninety million miles distant, and beyond 


106 


THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE PLANETS. 


the asteroids two hundred million miles, we encounter 
Jupiter, the largest of the planets. She is eighty-nine 
thousand miles in diameter, and yet rotates on her axis 
every nine hours, fifty-five minutes, and thirty-three 
seconds. She is surrounded by dark belts which shift 
and melt into each other. Besides the belts, spots are 
sometimes seen mingling dark with fiery-red reflections; 
perhaps glimpses of underlying volcanic fires, seen 
through its rapidly rotating, and therefore striped atmos¬ 
phere of clouds. 

We cannot suppose that this stupendous planet is in 
every sense an organized world. We behold in Jupiter a 
revolving, bulky nebula, the waters of whose oceans are 
at this time falling vapor, and whose central core is yet 
flexible rock, bending in lightning waves to earthquake 
shocks and volcanic fires. 

We shall hereafter show that the earth, in the fourth 
day of its history, was in like manner enveloped in belts 
and spots, when its atmosphere embraced much of the 
water of present seas, the black smoke of its coal-fields, 
and the carbonic acid gas of its carbon, since stored away 
in immense coal measures and other rock-strata of the 
globe ; when, in short, the outer crust of this earth hung 
suspended in vapor, filling the firmament, over a damp 
hot-house landscape of carboniferous forests, with black 
clouds and dense watery vapors, thirty thousand miles 
in depth, making a planet nearly as large as Jupiter. 

In like manner Jupiter’s future oceans, her coal 
measures, and many other elements of her future crust, 
are now wrapped around her in a blanket of clouds thou¬ 
sands of miles in depth. 

Turn to the seventeenth chapter of this book, the 
history of the earth’s fourth day, the history of the age of 


JUPITER. 


107 


coal plants, “The age of coming blue and blazing sun,” 
and you will find described in detail, mighty carbonifer¬ 
ous forests, which at the present time clothe Jupiter’s 
whole landscape, together with a description of the deni¬ 
zens of living forms which swarm and bask in her warm 
oceans, filling every lake and stream with varied moving 
forms. 

It is the age and reign of fishes, while forests of 
rapid growth and prodigious size clothe all the landscape. 
In Jupiter is now being repeated the scenes of the earth’s 
fourth day, beneath a blanket of clouds thirty thousand 
miles in depth. 

Saturn next pursues a path four hundred million 
miles beyond Jupiter, and nine hundred million miles 
from the sun, around which she travels in ten thousand 
seven hundred and forty-six days. 

Saturn is nearly as large as Jupiter, being seventy- 
nine thousand miles in diameter. 

Like Jupiter, her surface is streaked with cloud-belts 
and bright spots ; but most remarkable of all, she is sur¬ 
rounded with a ring or rings, like the rim of a spinning- 
wheel, revolving around her, in the plane of her equator. 

The substances of this ring are held outward by the 
intense centrifugal force of the planet, revolving as she 
does on her axis every ten hours and sixteen minutes. 
The distance of the inner edge of the ring from the planet, 
has been estimated to be about nineteen thousand miles, 
while its breadth, from the inner to the outer edge, is 
twenty-eight thousand miles, and its thickness perhaps 
not more than one hundred miles. 

Behold this ring, a stupendous balance wheel, com¬ 
posed of cometous and meteoric substances, not alto¬ 
gether unlike the substances composing the Aurora 


108 


THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE PLANETS. 


Borealis or comets, rotating at the terrible velocity of 
thirty thousand miles an hour, and we are not surprised 
at its existence ; we only wonder that it is not larger, and 
that more of the external atmospheric substances of the 
planet are not caught up by centrifugal force, and held 
outward in mighty revolving folds. 

The distance of the second ring from the planet 
Saturn has diminished since 1657, and has doubled its 
breadth in the same manner ; in all probability the ring 
is closing in upon the central body of the planet, and will 
fall upon it in less than five hundred years. From this 
data it is probable that the axial rotation of the planet 
itself is decreasing, and that she will in time assume a 
position nearer the sun, in harmony with the decreasing 
momentum. 

The seven satellites of Saturn revolve around her, 
on the exterior of the ring, and almost all of them in 
nearly the same plane. The tw T o inner ones are seen like 
small bright beads on the minute thread of light formed 
by the edge of the ring. The three next are small, the 
fifth and sixth larger, separated by intervening distance 
increasing with each outer moon to the seventh, which is 
about the size of the planet Mars, and over two million 
miles from the body of Saturn. 

These satellites may be the result of the condensa¬ 
tion of independent comets, caught in the external ether 
currents of Saturn, and slowly evolving the world-changes 
of true planets. 

According to the Nebular Hypothesis, as advocated 
by Swedenborg, Laplace, Comte, Herschel, and Ponte- 
coulant, these satellites are the result of the breaking and 
condensation of former rings, which once encircled the 
planet in the orbits of the present satellites. 


SATURN. 


109 


We will here remark that on the basis of the analogy 
of Saturn and her rings and moons, the whole Nebular 
Hypothesis has been built; and a theory in general 
accepted that similar rings once encircled the sun, 
from the substance of which all the planets have been 
evolved. 

It is possible that Saturn's remaining rings may yet 
break up, forming satellites ; but more probable, that 
with the condensation and contraction of the body of 
Saturn, and the lessening of her axial rotation, the matter 
of these rings will be precipitated in cometous folds, like 
the Aurora Borealis, in meteoric showers through her 
atmosphere upon the face of Saturn. 

Saturn, like the earth, the sun, and all the planets, 
and every flexible rotating body, is not a solid but a 
hollow, concave globe, like the rind of an orange or shell 
of an egg. This is a law of natural philosophy, that all 
rapidly revolving flexible bodies become hollow spheres, 
the internal dimensions of which are proportioned to the 
rapidity of their rotary motion. This law frequently 
causes the explosion of rapidly revolving circular-saws, 
grindstones, and balance-wheels. 

Saturn, the earth, and all planets having had their 
origin in flexible revolving matter, and being still flexible, 
rotating bodies, are therefore hollow ; and internal matter 
is held outward against the shell by a force equal to that 
which on the exterior draws matter downward ; namely, 
gravitation. The flood of internal fire, demonstrated by 
the ratio of increasing warmth as we go downward in the 
earth, increasing to intense heat and fusing the rocks into 
a molten floor deep down in the underlying strata of the 
globe ; deeper still the increasing intensity of heat fuses 
the metals into vapors, and converts the centers into liol- 


110 


THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE PLANETS. 


low, gaseous globes — another cause of the convexity of 
planets. 

Saturn and the planets, the concave earth itself, 
differ not essentially from a drop of water suspended in 
God’s sunshine, and revealing to us through the micro¬ 
scope infinite realms of life. 

The planet Saturn, like Jupiter, is undoubtedly in an 
almost chaotic state, with perhaps an underlying core or 
shell of granite caging a central ball of fire, on the sur¬ 
face of which new-forming seas dash waves of warm 
water, wearing the granite into sediment, mixed with the 
dead protoplasm of an abundant animalcula and insectiv¬ 
orous life, springing spontaneous from the waters, and 
hardening with granite sediment into gneiss and slate. 

Tempests and tornadoes stalk in grandeur over the 
mighty oceans, heaping the waters into mountain waves, 
or move in stately revolving columns on the flood. The 
warm water of the seas furnishes a vehicle for the germi¬ 
nation and dawn of life, and majestic coral reefs stretch 
away in lines of beauty, covering vast areas by the 
wear and wash of waves with the debris of its substance ; 
while mollusks in endless profusion heap shells upon 
shells, forming the substance of future strata of marble ; 
which overlie the granite, the gneiss, and slate, and 
wrap the whole plain of Saturn with ribs of chalk, shale, 
and sandstone ; and other limestone thousands of feet in 
depth. 

Saturn’s atmospheric envelope, the surface of which 
we recognize as the planet, is probably thirty if not forty 
thousand miles in depth, composed of oxygen and hydro¬ 
gen, the true elements of air, together with a superabun¬ 
dant intermixture of carbon gas, mineral vapors, and dark 
clouds of poison, which render the existence of any 


URANUS AND NEPTUNE. 


Ill 


forms of air-breathing life impossible. It is the age of 
wearing oceans and the reign of shell-fishes. 

Turn to chapter sixteen — third day of the world’s 
history — age of dawning life, and you will find a descrip¬ 
tion in detail of the scenes and phenomena now being 
enacted on the surface of the planet Saturn. 

ITranus, the next planet, located nine hundred mill¬ 
ion miles beyond Saturn, and one billion eight hundred 
million miles from the sun, moving around him once in 
about eighty-four years, is computed to be thirty-five 
thousand miles in diameter, and if we can believe the 
authorities, rotates on her mighty axis once every seven 
hours; the probability is that these figures from the 
astronomers are over-estimated, and that her axial rota¬ 
tion is in harmony with her rotund form and motion 
around the sun. 

Uranus is remarkable for the retrograde motion of 
her four moons, appearing to travel in a direction oppo¬ 
site the direction of the planet; located in orbits perpen¬ 
dicular to the orbit of the planet. 

Uranus shines as a star of the sixth magnitude, and 
is just visible to the naked eye. On her surface is being 
enacted a terrific struggle between fire and water, grind¬ 
ing the granite foundation of the sea into fragments, and 
forming gneiss and slate, while boiling oceans emit dense 
vapors and steam, and the heavens give back their waters 
in one continued shower. 

Read chapter fifteen — second day of the world’s his¬ 
tory — age of falling oceans, and you have a description in 
detail of the present existing conflict of elements now 
taking place on the planet Uranus. 

Neptune, the most remote planet of the solar system, 
because of her immense distance, is invisible to the naked 


112 


THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE PLANETS. 


eye. She revolves around the sun once every one hun¬ 
dred and sixty-five years, being distant from the sun over 
two and one half billion miles. The period of Halley’s 
comet around the sun is seventy-six and three fourths 
years, and eight other comets whose periods are definitely 
known are much less. 

Regarding the sizes of both Neptune and Uranus, 
there is among astronomers a conflict of opinion. We 
regard them in many aspects as similar to comets, stu¬ 
pendous fog-banks or globes of cosmic matter, the evolv¬ 
ing products of comets, which having spent the fury of 
their fires, have cooled and contracted the trailing 
tresses into denser fogs. And Neptune now wraps in 
clouds the blazing heart of a molten sea of fire ; and crys¬ 
tal flakes of granite are being precipitated like falling 
hail or fire-fly meteors, through a blanket of dark clouds 
thousands of miles in depth, slowly incrusting the mol¬ 
ten pot of boiling rock with the foundation stone for 
future seas. 

She is moving slowly in a career of untold cycles of 
ages, towards that future condensation, when a white 
floor of granite shall have caged the central molten flood 
of fire ; upon which billowy oceans will surge, and life 
and animation mantle mighty landscapes yet to come. 

Turn to the fourteenth chapter of this book, and 
read the record of the first dawning day of the world’s 
history — the age of fire and falling granite, and you have 
the history of the transition of Neptune from a cometous 
sea of fire and vapor to a bulky embryonic planet. 

We have made a rapid survey of the planets; from 
the aged Mercury, with step enfeebled, supported by 
staff ; weighed down with the burden and mighty volume ; 



THE NINE SISTERS. 


113 


entombing in her rocks the history of all her ages ; from 
comet life and rich experience in the place of all the 
planets, to her present station on the border-land of time, 
soon to plunge into judgment and the abyss of fire. 
Queen and hero of all the wars, oldest sister and leader 
of the planets ; marching one by one, in solemn single 
file, with slow measured steps, toward the promise of 
brighter lands and happier realms beyond the sun. 

We have seen them representing, each, a period and 
place of development on the shore of birth and death, 
inception and decay. Venus, the Earth, and Mars, 
dressed in manner of young or dignified womanhood 
following in the footsteps of Mercury, their more vener¬ 
able sister ; the maiden Jupiter and younger sister Saturn, 
arrayed in plumage and wreaths and rings of flowers ; the 
child Uranus leading behind the baby Neptune, with 
tottering footsteps, mind all unformed, life all prospec¬ 
tive ; scarcely dreaming of the tremendous ages, steps of 
infinite, varied history and experience, in the life and 
march before her ; to follow in the footsteps of all her 
older sisters, as one by one, weary with time, they make 
the sun their pillow, and fall into the sleep which knows 
no waking, the sleep of eternal dreams. 

Behold them now, each in his respective place, the 
beacon lights and sentinels of all the ages,— 

“Way-marks of two eternities.” 

It may be urged as an objection, that none of the 
planets have fallen into the sun, or any of them made 
an}' perceptible change in their positions for the last three 
thousand years, or since astronomic and scientific obser¬ 
vation began. We fully appreciate the argument; but 
three thousand years is a very short time, compared with 


114 


THE PAST AND FUTUBE OF THE PLANETS. 


a full axial period, or day of a planet, which cannot be 
less than a half million years ; further, we shall show 
that the epochs and changes in the positions of the planets 
probably take place in reference to them all at the same 
time, the whole planetary system unbalanced by the 
changing position of a single one. Therefore, the period 
of these tremendous epochs will be witnessed as in the 
past by all simultaneously. 

According to the laws of the movements of planets 
as explained in chapter nine, when they have reached 
positions contrary to their revolving atmospheres, stop¬ 
ping first their axial rotations; while the planets strug¬ 
gling for a new equilibrium and a new axis of motion, 
in harmony with the motion of their atmospheres, will 
plunge reeling towards the sun. The earth’s rotary mo¬ 
tion for a time will stop, and with it day and night, until 
the universal turmoil and rotary tornado, holding the 
earth in its arms, has changed the very axis of the earth, 
forcing her forward in a new orbit around the sun. The 
crust of the earth will groan and burst in places, lifting 
higher former mountains, or sinking them into the bow¬ 
els of the earth’s molten sea. Earthquakes and numerous 
volcanoes wfill bubble up from the pot of central, agitated 
fires, and mantle the heavens in a black pall of cinders 
and ashes. Smoke and vapors will issue from craters and 
from crevices, while seams of fire, opening beneath 
and spanning the oceans, will send up mantles of black 
and gray. 

The thickened air will become dismal in the lurid 
light of volcanoes, and lightnings’ red glare, flashing dull 
amid the deafening turmoil and black sky of hanging 
gloom or melancholy’s somber shroud; mighty tidal 
waves will ingulf numerous sea-port cities, and a cease- 


FALLING INTO THE SUN. 


115 


less hurricane of rotary winds will establish the very 
earth on a new foundation, with new axial centers, and a 
new path around the sun ; the planet Mercury will plunge 
into his fires, Venus take the place of Mercury, and the 
Earth the place of Venus. Mars will take the place of 
the Earth, the Asteroids the place of Mars, and Jupiter 
the place of the Asteroids, Saturn the place of Jupiter, 
and Uranus the place of Saturn, and Neptune the place 
of Uranus. While amid the war and struggle of forces 
and of planets to regain an equipoise, reeling like drunk¬ 
ards in the unsettled heaven, in-coming comets will be 
attracted to the outer confines of our system, and dashed 
by the waves of an ethereal, surging sea into the form 
and place of Neptune. Then will have come the great 
and notable day. 

“The sun shall be turned into darkness, 

The moon into blood, and the stars shall 
Withdraw their shining. Sun, stand thou still 
Upon Gibeon ; and thou, moon, in the valley 
Of Ajalon. Whose voice then shook the earth, 

But now he hath promised, saying, Yea, once more 
I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. 

There shall be signs in the sun, 

And in the moon, and in the stars, 

And upon the earth distress of nations, 

With perplexity ; the sea and the waves roaring ; 

I will cause the sun to go down at noon, 

And I will darken the earth in the clear sky. 

And the stars shall fall from heaven, 

And the powers of the heavens shall be shaken . -1 

1 The above is a sample of our method of Bible quotations. Places 
where the parts can be found, are as follows : Joel 2 : 31 ; 3 : 15 5 Joshua 
10 : 12 ; Hebrews 12 : 26 ; Luke 21 : 25 ; Amos 8:9; Matthew 2-1 : 29. 
Hereafter, to save space, we shall leave Bible quotations for a Bible study, as 
the parts are all contained therein. 


CHAPTER VI. 


THE SUN AND HIS CORTEGE OF PLANETS—HIS PAST, PRESENT, 

AND FUTURE—OTHER SUNS. 

“All night the dreadless angel, unpursued. 

Through heaven’s wide champion held his sway ; till morn, 
Waked by the circling hours, with rosy hand 

t 

Unbarred the gates of light. There is a cave 
Within, the mount of God, fast by his throne, 

Where light and darkness, in perpetual round, 

Lodge and dislodge by turns ; which makes through heaven 
Grateful vicissitudes, like day and night. 

Light issues forth, and at the other door 
Obsequious darkness enters, till her hour 
To veil the heavens ; though darkness might well 
Seem twilight there ; and now went forth the morn, 

Such as in highest heaven, arrayed in gold, 

Imperial; from before her vanquished night.” 

The sun, ninety-two million five hundred thousand 
miles from the earth, is eight hundred and sixty thousand 
miles in diameter, rotating on his axis every twenty-five 
and one third days. 

A string of three hundred and forty beads the size of 
the earth would be required like the beads of a necklace 
to encircle the sun’s waist. If we represent the sun by a 
globe two feet in diameter, a pea three hundred feet 
distant would represent the earth. 

The sun is a body of gaseous, liquid, and partially 
stratified elements, surrounded with an atmosphere or 
photosphere of flame, and various metallic substances 
[ 110 ] 


TIIE SUN AT MIDNIGHT IN THE NORTH. ' [1171 































































































































































































































































































































































COMPOSITION OF THE SUN. 


110 


gasified by beat. The spectroscope lias discovered oxy¬ 
gen, hydrogen, and nitrogen in his atmosphere, which 
surrounds him in various radiating degrees of density, for 
hundreds of thousands of miles, and the zodiacal light is 
a continuation of his outer gases. 

The great gravitation and condensation of the sub¬ 
stances composing the sun, in conflict with his fires, 
create on his surface a constant turmoil of mighty com¬ 
bustions, hurling immense bodies, like the scattered rock 
of volcanic eruptions, tens of thousands of miles from his 
surface, falling back into the fiery sea, to be again ejected 
by explosions as terrific as before. 

The solar spots are great depressions or mighty 
craters, distending wide-mouthed openings in a sea of 
fire ; like our cyclones, currents descend and carry down 
into the depths of the solar mass cooler material from the 
outer layers, with hydrogen and other gases, producing a 
decided extinction of light. At the base of these stu¬ 
pendous whirlpools, the hydrogen is re-heated, and rises 
in tremendous jets on the surface of the chromosphere. 
The velocity of these movements is incredible ; an up- 
rusli at the sides or down-rush in the center has been 
measured, of sixty miles a second, a side-rush, or whirl, 
of a hundred and twenty miles a second. These tre¬ 
mendous cyclones continue from a few days to several 
months, covering regions of space into which the earth 
could be thrown like a ball of ice, without producing 
more than a perceptible bubble on the sun’s surface. 

The advancing sides of the sun’s spots or open cra¬ 
ters, have been observed to approach each other at the 
rate of twenty thousand miles an hour, and striking 
together in a rising pillar of fire, leap a hundred thousand 
miles into space. 


120 


THE SUN. 


On the day of the eclipse of 1858, a spot one hun¬ 
dred and seven thousand miles across was seen, and when 
the disc of the sun was totally obscured, flaming jets shot 
out on either side fifty and a hundred thousand miles 
into space. 

These mighty pillars of fire fall again into the incan¬ 
descent surge like the sea on pebbles ; thus the sun’s fires 
continue without sign of exhaustion or diminution. 

We desire to make impressive the tremendous and 
awful fires composing the agitated sea of the sun. The 
mind cannot conceive nor imagination paint the fearful 
vortex. If we illustrate the sun’s moving storms of fire 
by the earth’s cyclones, whose greatest velocity of motion 
is no more than one hundred miles an hour, yet sufficient 
to wreck and lay waste villages and cities, mowdng great 
paths through the forest and foundering with a shock the 
struggling bark; what shall we say of the sun’s cyclones 
of fire, moving one hundred miles a second ! 

Should but the border of these tempests, coming 
down upon us from the north, touch the earth, it would 
in thirty seconds sweep the entire American continent 
from pole to pole, carrying before it the rock foundation 
side of our globe, with the cities of New York and San 
Francisco, Quebec and Mexico, not in scattered ruins, 
but in an indistinguishable earthquake and thunderbolt 
of flame. 

Beholding these visions, in the sun, of an actual 
body in furious flame, and considering the fact that the 
earth is in the circle of the whirlpool of his vortex, mov¬ 
ing steadily in periods covering eons of ages, approaching 
nearer and nearer the crater into which she must in the 
end fall, to be followed in after ages by each and all her 
sister planets, can we doubt the words of St. Paul and 


THE EARTH IN THE SUN. 


121 


St. Peter, or of Isaiah and the Revelation, of the time 
when — 


“ The heavens and the earth shall pass away, 
The elements melt with fervent heat, 

The earth also and the works that are therein. 
And there fell a great star from heaven, 

And a third part of the sun was smitten ; 
Every mountain and island was moved, 

The heavens departed as a scroll, 

The sun became black as sackcloth ; 

A woman clothed with the sun, 

And the moon under her feet; 

Babylon is fallen, the great, the great, 

And power is given unto the sun 
To scorch men with fire ! ” 


The sun’s outer atmosphere in a sense extends to the 
boundaries of our solar system and the most remote 
planet, decreasing in density according to the law of grav¬ 
ity with the ratio of distance. 

His outer atmosphere, like our own, to which ours is 
related, is transparent, save clouds in the form of the 
zodiac light, the Aurora Borealis, comets, and planets, 
all floating in his outer ethereal atmosphere. 

We are in the arms of the sun, in his embrace, vivi¬ 
fied by his light, warmed by his heat, and shielded by his 
love ; his mighty heart beats against the heart of the 
world, and our hearts ; and progress is written on all his 
planets, as they nestle closer to his bosom, and receive 
his inspiration and life. 

Yes, that fire is divine. It is the porch lamp of 
God’s own mansion; back of whose light, heat, and effulgent 
glory, the Author of all creation, of every planet, and of 
the life which clings upon them, sits enthroned ; and his 


122 


THE SUN. 


crystalline, transparent folds reach outward, entwining 
and holding in their places the planets. 

“ God is love. God is light. 

God is a sun and a shield ” ; — 

the divine essence manifest in primitive substance, out of 
which has sprung the infinite creation with all its mov¬ 
ing life. 

It is said that space is filled with ether, an unknown 
substance and medium of light and heat, without which 
the sun’s rays could not be transmitted to the earth. 

This name is as good as any, but the element, how¬ 
ever, which surrounds our sun and fills our system, 
reaching beyond the most remote planet, is the element of 
the sun’s own exterior ; belonging to him as the radiating 
halo of which the central scintillating red is but the 
product of condensation ; the stratified, fiery nucleus of 
an ethereal sea extending beyond the confines of the 
remote planets ; dense near the sun according to the law 
of gravitation, and more rare with the ratio of distance 
from the sun. 

This ethereal substance which clothes the sun, em¬ 
bracing within it all the planets of our system, is the sub¬ 
stance by which our sun reaches out and leans against 
other suns ; — suns and systems of suns like the separate 
atoms composing the rain drop, leaning against and 
clinging to each other by the law of affinity, forming this 
stupendous galaxy of Milky Ways ; the nucleated drops 
of whose water, each embracing a central sun, compose the 
atoms of that infinite sea, over the heaving billows of 
whose tempest-dashed waters, the infinite God walks in 
majesty,— 

“ Who maketh the storm a calm, 

And the waves thereof are still.” 


THE SUN'S OUTER ATMOSPHERE. 


123 


The outer ethereal elements of the sun's own substance is 
the medium in which all the planets float like bubbles in 
air, near the sun or remote according to their density or 
specific gravity of the ethereal strata in which they live. 

We shall yet show that the earth and all planets 
are hollow bodies, sustained centrally by the expansive 
properties of heat; — hot gaseous seas, holding outward 
shells of fire supporting ribs of granite, and a thin shell 
of stratified substance, surrounded with an atmospheric 
halo ; — bubbles floating in the ethereal atmosphere of the 
sun; — blood globules, circulating in the veins of his life, 
and throbbing with every pulsation of his mighty heart. 

This ethereal outer atmosphere of the sun, increasing 
in density from the confines of our system towards its 
center, is the resisting medium of comets ; which driven 
from other systems by the accelerating force of momentum 
deep into the waters of our sun’s atmosphere, cannot 
reach his central fires ; but, carried by his revolving ether 
currents around him, are thrown back in sharp ellipses, 
like floats rising from the deep sea, or bubbles ascend¬ 
ing in air. 

And this is true of planets. They all occupy posi¬ 
tions according to their density ; the outer planets are 
great fiery, thinly-incrusted shells surrounded with 
mighty fog-banks of atmospheric or nebulous matter; as 
they become more dense, they assume positions nearer 
the center of all life; and finally, a broken, leaden, cold 
ball of dead matter, fall into his resurrecting fires—the 
sarcophagus, the marble, the tomb, the wrapped mummy 
waiting for the resurrection promised by the priests of 
long ago — the great world wrapped around with shroud, 
entombing her countless millions of sleeping dead — a 
charnal house and tomb of death, — all shall awake 


124 


THE SUN. 


again ; every latent sleeping energy of the world shall 
spring forth into activity and life. 

“Hail! holy light, offspring of heaven ! first-born ; 

Or of the eternal, co-eternal beam, 

May I express thee unblamed, since God is light; 

Dwelt from eternity ; dwelt then in thee, 

Bright effulgence of bright essence Incarnate ; 

Whose fountain, who shall tell ? Before the sun, 

Before the heavens, thou wert. and at the voice 

Of God, as with a mantle didst invest 

The rising world of waters, dark and deep ; 

Won from the void and formless infinite.” 

From the sun we receive heat, light, and other prin¬ 
ciples which have not been clearly defined, clothing the 
world with verdure, painting the landscape with forest 
shades of green, groves of singing pine-trees; carpeting 
the hills with violets, opening buds, and ten thousand 
varied colors, sprinkled with smiles and blushes from 
shadows coy, sparkling with his own bedizened glory; 
while all nature animated with his life, assumes ten mill¬ 
ion moving forms, basking in his bright rays. 

The sun, like a magic wand, touches our atmosphere, 
the winds leap to his embrace, coiling in mighty, folds, 
bounding forward with the world in rapid rotary motion. 
The sun kisses the cold earth, and it blushes with foliage 
and flowers. He presses his glowing cheek against the 
world with light and warmth, and animates into life every 
feeling, moving thing. His heart pulsates against the 
world's heart, and intelligence, with deep feeling love, 
springs forth in the human brain. 

He moves the winds, and white-sailed ships on 
ocean's broad expanse are wafted safely home. He 
chases away the shadow, the poison and malaria, of every 



“ Go Out and Stand, with Head Uncovered Luce a Mountain, 

the Mountains.” 


Among 

[ 125 ] 































LIQUID SUNLIGHT. 


127 


marsh, and wipes out with cleansing touch the miasm and 
pollution of swarming cities, then bids the winds to wash 
themselves in ocean’s spray ; where, drinking the draft of 
purer moisture, they return with storm-capped clouds and 
water-falls, taught by his power to turn the wheels of 
human industry ; making possible the mill, with its multi¬ 
tudinous varied products,— its Lowells, its Manchester. 
Yes ; the sun carried all this water to the hills ! 

The sun with amorous glance magnetizes the earth, 
joy leaps from every rill, health gushes from every spring. 
The sun conceived, and poured his life upon the forming 
earth, when it assumed multitudinous crystalline forms ; 
the rocks came, the oceans heaved their breasts, and 
foliage and flowers ran up the shoulder of the hills. 

Surplus sun-light is found to-day in beds of coal and 
petroleum veins. We mine the coal, raise the oil, and 
with them convert water into steam, driving the locomo¬ 
tive on its track, and propelling ten million mechanical 
wheels. Thus the sun lends his mighty shoulder to the 
cause of human industry, turns the lever, and performs 
the menial labor of man. 

Ten tons of coal which the leaves of long ago 
gathered from the sunshine, will shovel more sand than 
a man can shovel in a life-time, so if a man intends to 
spend his life in the mere use of his muscles, he had 
better dig ten tons of coal and set that to do the work, 
for it will be done more passionately, lovingly, willingly. 

Our earth, with all its teeming, feeling, thinking, 
animate life, is one mighty, majestic monument of the 
sun’s creative, sustaining power. God bade the sun 
create the world, supply the elements and vitalizing force 
of the progressing chain of its advancing life, and age by 
age the sun calls the world nearer home, teaches its heart 


128 


THE SUN. 


and brain new and grander lessons, prepares the soul of 
its multitudinous human life, accumulating into stupen¬ 
dous mines of sleeping force, covered o’er with mourning 
cloth of tomb and shroud, for future grander, mightier 
use. In the bosom of his light and life will jet be real¬ 
ized the undefined, longing hope of every human heart. 

Behold the sun; — a relentless reservoir of the 
mightiest energies, with stupendous tornadoes stalking in 
the photosphere of his waters twenty thousand miles an 
hour, sending out spires of flame a hundred thousand 
miles in height; as uncpienchable and inexhaustible as 
the subtle, acute conscience in the heart of man, his fires 
seethe and burn, flashing forth floods of scintillating life 
along the starry space. 

From the strategic position which he occupies, he 
sends his power to every planet, and fills the vast circle 
above and around with light and love. He fills with 
glory not merely a dome above, but one below and on 
every side. 

Go out and view that side of the earth mantled in 
his glory with sunshine, storm, or falling rain, building 
Columbia’s proud Niagara, wreathed by his light in rain¬ 
bow tresses and cloth of silver and gold ; or stand like a 
mountain among the mountains with head uncovered, 
haloed in his light, and feel the immeasurable rush of his 
life. Look out into space, and behold the hanging plane¬ 
tary worlds, and trace all this to the orb of day — a sun 
sublime, profound of life. 

The constantly recurring showers mean an annual 
fall of four feet of water on the earth’s entire surface ; 
lifting the hills and casting them into the sea would be a 
small thing compared with the sunshine lifting and trans¬ 
porting the water of the ocean, and pouring it in life- 


LIQUID SUNLIGHT. 


129 


giving showers on all the continents. You have heard 
the thunder, observed the eternal round of rainbows, and 
seen Niagara pouring.out her majestic waters; — going 
back to causes, the sun from his car of crimson and 
palace of gold, with his drapery of sunbeams, lifted all 
this water to the hills. Behold the world itself, rocking 
and plunging among the stars, impelled by force and 
curbed to a pathway, and trace all this to yon sun’s efful¬ 
gent, scintillating power ! 

Lockyer has proven that the elements have been de¬ 
rived, and are but varied manifestations of, one primitive 
substance, which he designates as hydrogen. And it is 
certain that all space is filled with substance, whether . 
hydrogen, oxygen, or a compound of known or unknown 
elements. There are no vacuums in the planetary spaces, 
no vacant spots in the infinite creation. 

The sun’s outer ethereal atmosphere of positive ele¬ 
ments extends to the remote boundaries of our system, 
filling a circle beyond the orbit of Neptune. Yon center 
of light is but a center, and not the whole,—the nucle¬ 
ated center of the surrounding halo known as our solar 
system. The sun enwrapping his cortege and trail of 
planets, holds out a million arms of splendor, reaching 
out against the radii of other suns in their palisades of 
crimson and gold, alike draped in scintillating light. 
These suns with their radiating spires of life and light, 
rest upon each other, and are crowded together as com¬ 
pact as the drops of water composing the sea. 

We are microscopic atoms, living on a world atom 
near the central depths of the sun ; the center is red, the 
outer is azure ; we look outward to Neptune in the 
azure, we look next into the fiery vortex, then look out 
into a river of surrounding suns, and mark the course of 


130 


THE SUN. 


currents among the stars. Our sun with his car and 
cortege of planets, is but a drop of the waters composing 
that infinite sea. Our world and the planets wrapped in 
the arms of the sun near his central vortex of light, are 
atoms which the Infinite views with his microscope, as in 
a drop of water. 

The Milky Way is a broad river of suns ; we view 
and contemplate only the central illuminations of the 
drops around us, the suns crowding upon and surrounding 
our sun; the bundle of stars fixed like jewels in the 
azure apple of night, are but a few contiguous drops in a 
mighty river of suns flowing onward through eternity. 

“And the great city of the new Jerusalem, 

A pure river of the water of life ; 

In the midst of the street of it, 

And on either side of the river, 

Was there the tree of life.” 

At times may be seen on the surface of the sun 
luminous masses known as “foculea,” and covering the 
main body of the sun’s disc are oval-shaped bodies ap¬ 
pearing like kernels of wheat ; these grains sometimes 
unite in groups like broken portions of a thatched roof. 
TV e behold the cloud-belt, the foculea, the forming crust 
on the agitated sea hundreds of thousands of miles ip 
depth, where liquids and solids, smoke and vapors, dif¬ 
fused metals, and lighter gases with spires of flame, are 
struggling for an equilibrium ; like the war and turmoil 
of elements in the early ages of the forming crust of our 
globe, the conflicting elements of the sun are struggling 
to in crust, encircle, and chain with a shell his mighty 
heart of fire. 



“You Have Heard the Thunder, and Seen Niagara Pouring Out Its 

Echoing Waters.” [131] 

























































































































FORMING CRUST. 


133 


On the surface of the sun is being enacted on a stu¬ 
pendous scale a repetition of the scenes of the first form¬ 
ing crust of the earth. The eternities will have wrapped 
his fires with ribs of granite. The earth, and all her 
sister planets, will have become foundation stones in his 
mighty pavement floor, w T hen his light and heat shall 
have been caged, chained, and incrusted with a planetary 
shell, upon which lofty mountains will lift their heads to 
the sunshine of other stars, and intervening oceans dash 
their waves. Continents will heave their bosoms from 
beneath the tides, with hills and valleys, where winding, 
dreamy rivers will reflect the hues of silver, the gold and 
crimson of the light from other stars, and the shadows of 
trees and flowers fringing their borders. And forests of 
varied foliage will climb the summits of ten thousand 
hills, amid which will gush springs and rivulets of pure 
water, flowing onward to the sea. 

Thinking, feeling, loving intelligences will ascend 
step by step the ladder of God’s progress, mantling the 
sun with clustered cities, busy animation, and deep, 
purest love. 

The planets revolving around the sun are but minia¬ 
ture prophecies of the sun himself ; smaller in size, and 
remote from severe heat, the process of cooling has gone 
on faster. They are completing the evolutions of their 
histories, living the changes of birth, growth, develop¬ 
ment, and decay as miniature bubbles in the outer atmos¬ 
phere of the sun, almost before his own history has 
begun. 

But the sun himself has an eternity before him, a 
future of world phenomena, of animate intelligent life, 
of Christ-like purity and love. We behold in him the 


134 


THE SUN. 


final fulfillment of dreams, visions of the patriarchs and 
prophets, the realization of the philosopher’s conception, 
the poet’s imaginings, and the deep-anchored beliefs from 
the Christian faith. 

God is mighty, and his plan beyond human concep¬ 
tion, his wisdom past finding out. In the light of sci¬ 
ence, the book of Revelation shines with clearest light, 
its seals are broken, and they who run may read and 
understand. 


“And I saw an angel standing in the sun, 

And he cried with a loud voice, saying, 

Gather yourselves together unto the supper ! 

And I saw the dead, small and great, 

Stand before God. The sea gave up the dead, 

And death and hell gave up the dead 

Which were in them. And the city had no need 

Of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it; 

And there shall be no night there, and there shall be 
No more curse. Blessed are they who do his com 
mandments.” 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE STARS —CHARACTER, MOTION, SIZE, DISTANCE — PAST 

AND FUTURE. 

“ Tnou, proud man, look upon yon starry vault, 

Survey the countless gems which richly stud 
The night’s imperial chariot. Telescopes 
Will show thee myriads more, innumerable 
As the sea-sands ; — each of those little lamps 
Is the great source of light, the central sun 
Round which some other mighty sisterhood 
Of planets travel, — every planet stocked 
With living beings, impotent as thee.” 

We behold in the sun a near star not essentially 
different from other stars ; they all fulfill an analogous 
purpose, giving light and warmth, and animating with 
life planets which revolve around them. 

That the stars or suns of the stellar heavens are fiery 
bodies, undergoing transformations and evolutions similar 
to the metamorphoses of our own sun or of his planets, 
there can be no doubt, and this is apparent in their 
changing appearances. 

Sirius, the brightest of the fixed stars at the present 
time, produces a white light, but according to the ancient 
Egyptian records, he was formerly red. Castor and 
Pollux, the twin stars, were once the reverse of their 
present luster and brightness ; one has increased, and the 
other diminished. In the days of Eratosthenes, Antares 
was less brilliant than either of the two stars in Libra. 

[135] 


THE STARS. 


136 


Numerous similar examples might be cited, showing 
that great metamorphic changes are taking place in the 
remote suns or stars of space ; and we infer that however 
vast the period of their full evolutions, birth, growth, 
development, and finally death and resurrection are as 
true of the stars or suns and systems of suns as of planets, 
of races, or of man. 

In the Milky Way, alone, there have been counted 
twenty million visible suns, independent of others undis- 
cernable. 

It is useless to compute in numbers the immense 
distance from us of even the nearest fixed star. The sun 
is distant from us about ninety-one and one half million 
miles ; if this distance be represented by one foot, even on 
this miniature scale, the distance of the nearest star would 
be over ten miles, while other remote stars and nebulae 
would still be many million miles distant. Alpha, whose 
light travels at the rate of one hundred and eighty thou¬ 
sand miles in a second, would require four years to reach 
the earth, while it would require seventy-two years for 
the light of Cobra to travel the immense distance which 
separates him from us ; and Herschel calculates that 
light would require eighteen thousand years to come 
from the remote stars distinguished with his twenty-foot 
telescope ; while it would require sixty million years for 
the light of many remote yet visible nebulae to span the 
tremendous distance from us. An artist with lens and 
camera plates, inhabiting the planets of these remote 
stars, would be compelled to wait the tremendous length 
of time of the above years to catch the pictures now 
embodied in the scenes of the earth. The story of 
Christ’s crucifixion, travelling with the rapidity of light 
and with the complete painted imagery of surrounding 
details, has not yet reached the remote stars. 


MOVING THROUGH SPACE. 


137 


Could we reach the stars in the infinite distance 
above our beads, we would discover new stars as infinite 
as those we now admire. 

But the domain of the Creator does not end even 
there : these are but the frontiers of the infinity of space. 
We should behold other immensities peopled with other 
incalculable worlds. And if our journey were to last 
for tens of thousands of centuries, we should never 
reach the limit which separates the universe and God. 
In the presence of such conceptions, calculation and 
poetry alike are dumb, and the boldest inquirer is awed 
into silence. 

It is demonstrated that our sun, dragging with him 
his whole family of planets, of which we are a part, is 
travelling towards the constellation Hercules, at the rate 
of thirty-three thousand miles an hour. 

The stars are divided into groups which form sys¬ 
tems similar to our group of planets,—the simplest sys¬ 
tem constituting the double and triple stars ; and there 
are other systems more numerous and complex, revolving 
and moving in reference to each other, each with a cor¬ 
tege or family of surrounding planets. 

Many stars undergo periodical variations, and one in 
the neck of Cetus is bright for fourteen days, and then 
disappears altogether for three hundred and thirty days. 
A star in Cygnus is seen for five, then disappears for ten 
years ; another star in the same constellation has a period 
of thirteen months. A star in the constellation Hydra is 
visible four months, and then recedes twenty months. 

Such phenomena indicate great activity in the remote 
regions of space, and we again infer that evolutions and 
changes are taking place with them. 

It is marvelous to contemplate that millions of 

globes, some of them many hundreds of times larger than 

8 


138 


THE STARS. 


our sun, are moving through space without coming into 
contact with each other, at a speed far greater than that 
of a cannon ball. It can only be explained on the 
hypothesis that all space between suns and systems is as 
densely filled with force, visible or invisible, as the 
opaque worlds themsel ves, and that every square inch of 
space, apparently empty and still, is agitated by powers 
as terrific as Niagara’s cataract. 

Spectrum analysis, by enabling us to read in a ray 
of light the nature of the body which produces it, the 
elements constituting that body, and the changes that 
take place in it, becomes, as it were, a messenger from the 
stars; the confidant of infinite space, the telegraph from 
incalculable distance, the revealer of the closest secrets. 
In astronomy it has extended the dominion of positive 
knowledge over millions upon millions of leagues, and by 
it ascertained the character and elements of the countless 
luminaries which flash forth dots of light in the starry 
space. 

In May, 1866, a brilliant star suddenly made its ap¬ 
pearance in the constellation of the Coronee Borealis, and 
shortly afterwards vanished ; but the spectroscope by 
Huggins revealed the fact that owing to vast internal con¬ 
vulsions, enormous quantities of gas were emitted, and 
taking fire caused the light represented by the brilliant 
rays. The flame, raising the solid matter in the photo¬ 
sphere of the star to a white heat, the hydrogen was 
exhausted, the light diminished in brilliancy, and the star 
resumed its normal appearance. It should be borne in 
mind that owing to the immense distance of the star in 
which this fire took place, its light must have been at an 
end a hundred years or more before we were made ac¬ 
quainted with it. 


A STAR ON FIRE. 130 

The stars to the unassisted eye seem red, orange, or 
yellow tinted, and through a glass the additional colors of 
orange, blue, green, and purple, thus — 

“ One star differs from another in glory. 

Spectroscopic analysis proves that these divers colors 
are produced by vapors in suspense in their atmospheres, 
and we know that the stellar atmospheres depend upon 
the elements and heat of individual stars; the stars have 
a function analogous to that of our sun ; they are, like it, 
surrounded by planets which they keep in place by force 
of attraction, and which they illumine and vivify by their 
light and heat. So it may well be — and eminent astron¬ 
omers have given such an opinion their sanction — that 
these distant regions are inhabited by beings intelligent 
like ourselves, capable of studying the harmony of crea¬ 
tion, and of appreciating the power of its supreme Author. 

The past and prospective future of our sun is the 
past and prospective future of all the stars in the firma¬ 
ment of heaven. The countless millions of stars appear¬ 
ing in the night like — 

“Swarms of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid,” 

occupy positions relative to each other, and form ai globe 
or wheel, the Milky Way,— a majestic wreath or crown 
decked with shining stars. How typical of the majesty 
of Him — 

“Whose forms robed or unrobed, he wears 

Of awe divine,”— whose thoughts they are. 

Other Milky Ways have been observed so far remote 
that, seen with a powerful telescope, they at first appear to 
be a single star, a small circle of bluish light, and not 
until recently lias the telescope resolved them into sepa- 


140 


THE STARS. 


rate dots,—mighty suns forming Milky Ways far off in 
stellar space. 

Who shall say that the Milky Ways do not form an 
order as countless as the stars, encircling and decking the 
landscape of that Infinitude whose thought reaches be¬ 
yond human thought, 

“Whose word is from everlasting to everlasting” ? 

Splendid vision of the completeness and unity of the 
great whole ! Oh ! it is grand ! 

“ Roll on, ye stars ! exult in youthful prime, 

Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time ; 

Near and more near your beamy cars apjDroach, 

And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach ; 

Flowers of the sky ! ye, too, to age must yield, 

Frail as your silken sisters of the field. 

Star after star from heaven’s high arch shall rush, 

Suns sink on suns, and systems crush, 

Headlong, extinct, to one dark center fall. 

And death, and night, and chaos mingle all: 

Till o’er the wreck, emerging from the storm, 

Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form, 

Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame, 

And soars and shines, another and the same ! ” 


CHAPTER VIII. 


OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE CREATION 

OF THE EARTH. 

“ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” 

Reader, let us go back in the eternities, to the time 
when the unconscious and unorganized elements of an 
uncreated earth hung suspended in the dark abyss of a 
boundless and voiceless expanse. 

“ And the earth was without form and void,” 

existing, or non-existing in the eternal profound of un¬ 
consciousness. Here the homogeneous substances of a 
future world slept in silence and solitude, unthought, un¬ 
felt, and unperceived. In this deep of waters no light 
had ever shone, no heat had animated, no motion moved, 

“And darkness was upon the face of the deep,” 

and more than darkness in the awful depths of that sea of 
solitude, indistinguishable from nonenity. 

Far off in the infinite expanse God had lit the dawn¬ 
ing fires of our sun, and his light, heat, and motion were 
bounding with lightning speed on a mighty mission ; and 
in them the invisible forms of Jehovah and Jove, sound¬ 
ing the blast of creation ; the chaotic, invisible nebula of 
our world was touched with light, a nervous electric thrill 
broke the spell of eternal solitude, chaos trembled with 
the flush of heat,— 

“And the Spirit of God moved on tho face of the waters ; ” 

[141] 


HISTORY OP' 1 THE DAWNING. 


142 

the mighty deep was agitated by the hirst impulse of mo¬ 
tion ; unconscious matter sprung to conscious life, as 
when ether is touched with fire, the deep of waters burst 
into a sea of flame,— 

“And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.” 

Combustion is motion, and the sea of waters sprung forth 
from an eternity of rest, leaping through space, impelled 
by a heart of fire. 

A new and brilliant comet flashed athwart the sky ; 
Mazzaroth in his season, and Arcturus with his suns, be¬ 
held the flaming orb,— 

“And God saw the light that it was good.” 

Attracted by our sun, the comet sped forward as if 
leaping to his embrace ; but the sun’s rotary motion and 
surrounding currents of ether, radiating to the boundaries 
of our system, like the fence of a swordsman, held out¬ 
ward, around him, and threw backward in a sharp ellipse, 
the new-born world of fire. In this ellipse the comet 
moved for long ages, influenced more and more by the 
radiating ether currents of our system, slowly converting 
the ellipse into the natural orbit and circle of a true 
planet. 

In the meantime the comet was spending the fury of 
her fires, and converting invisible nebular matter into 
tangible vapor, while oxygen and hydrogen gases 
wrapped all in a watery atmosphere ; and the central core 
of fire was robed in a cloud-belt of blankets twenty thou¬ 
sand miles in depth, shutting out the sun. and holding a 
black sea of darkness against the sky. 

“And God divided the light from the darkness.” 


CREATION OF THE EARTH. 


143 


Ages filed in single columns to their tomb, while 
crystallizing mineral showers fell in perpetual storm from 
the astonished sky, forming in the central depths a molten 
flood of granite. 

Axial motion was established by the influence of the 
sun on the enveloping cloud-belt of vapors, and the meta- 
rnorphic changes of an embryonic world gave place to a 
fixed and stable planet. 

“And the evening and the morning were the first day.” 

There is nothing even now in the composition of our 
globe that cannot be reduced by heat to its primitive gas¬ 
eous condition, and we shall show that the whole evi¬ 
dence of geology points backward to the original gaseous 
and fiery condition of the earth ; and chemistry is equally 
positive in proving a gaseous state as the original condi¬ 
tion of every liquid and solid. 

Let us imagine the early nebula out of which the 
earth was formed, by supposing the world melted down 
with fervent heat, her oceans, her mountains, her metals, 
her hills, and her rocks converted into gas. A pint of 
water will produce a hundred and twenty cubic feet of 
steam ; a pound of marble, or two pounds of coal, four 
hundred cubic feet of carbonic acid gas. Let us melt, 
burn, and convert into gas every liquid and solid compos¬ 
ing the crust of the earth. In the place of a solid globe 
eight thousand miles in diameter, behold a nebula, three 
million one hundred thousand miles in circumference, a 
stupendous ocean of gas, reaching beyond and filling the 
orbit of the moon ; yes, let us melt, burn, and convert 
our satellite into a gaseous nebula, and with her ethereal 
substances form an independent external ocean, with a 
central nucleus of fire, and we behold the earth and our 


144 HISTORY OF THE DAWNING. 

satellite, a double comet, with two radiating tresses of 
phosphorescent splendor. Such was the condition of the 
earth and its satellite, far back in the past; in this condi¬ 
tion they pursued their annual course for ages around the 
sun. It is possible, however, that our satellite may have 
had a separate independent origin, lived the evolutions of 
a comet and planet, finally yielding up her moisture to 
the sun, becoming a dead world, since caught in the ether 
current of our earth, to be carried on its shoulder until 
they fall together into the vortex of chaos and ruin. But 
we will leave our satellite, and follow the cooling and 
condensations of the forming earth. 

This stupendous nebula, composed of mineral and 
other vapors, oscillated for long ages around the sun, 
combustion was slowly spending its force, and the quiesc¬ 
ing elements exhausting their heat; heat was also radiat¬ 
ing into space, a process especially marked at the circum¬ 
ference ; and blankets of moisture, by a union of oxygen 
and hydrogen gases, began to form on the surface of 
what was still centrally a burning nebula. The water of 
all the seas, in gaseous clouds, hung suspended in the 
firmament, high above the fiery flood, surrounding and 
enshrouding the nebulous world ; under its cooling influ¬ 
ence, mineral gases began to precipitate flakes or crystals 
of granite, at first like the breath of a frosty morning, 
accumulating to tempestuous storm, or falling serene as 
the outpouring quiet of falling snow, or the precipitous 
beating of continuous hail, or illuminating the whole 
heavens in a more magnificent display of meteoric show¬ 
ers, falling from the circumference towards the center in 
obedience to the law of gravitation ; the more intense 
heat in the central depths of the nebula melted, diffused, 
converted into gas, and again sent back by the law of 


CREATION OF THE EARTH. 


145 


expansion, and fixed the circumference of the molten 
flood or liquid sea of rock in the place where now stands 
the granite, since cooled, crystallized, and hardened into 
the foundation crust of the globe. 

The early crust of the primitive world formed farther 
from the center than at present, making a much larger 
and thinner shell, a natural result of solidification of the 
liquid surface of a slowly cooling body, sustained cen¬ 
trally by the expansive properties of heat; therefore the 
crust of the earth has always been proportioned in size 
to the measure of the intensity of internal heat. 

During long ages the earth continued to cool, not 
only at the circumference, condensing and precipitating 
atmospheric vapors, but encroaching more and more upon 
the center; age by age the fiery pillars of the internal 
earth have contracted, refusing support to the external 
shell, and the breaking crust has fallen inward, to a new 
plane of balance; which is even now the explanation 
of earthquakes, creating thereby the rocky ribs of hills 
and mountain chains, and creating with each convulsion 
a smaller earth. Hence mountains on the surface of 
planets are marks of age, increasing in prominence and 
height as we approach the planets nearest the sun, even to 
Mercury, whose mountain chains are computed to be 
eleven miles high. 

Roll on, thou world newly born, 

Bleak thy surface, and void of life, 

Dark the clouds that wrap thee round. 

Storms lower and lightnings flash, 

Fiery flakes of crystal stone, 

From loss of heat precipitated, 

Fall fast upon thy molten breast; 

Ages roll, and deep miles of solid rock 
Have formed for thee a giant shell — 


HISTORY OF THE DAWNING. 


146 


A sure foundation for future seas. 

An adamant base for all the hills. 

Roll on, young world, ages on ages roll, 

Cool down thy hot and fevered breast. 

Aqueous clouds around thee form : 

Ye hot, hissing, seething rocks 
Be baptized with water of all the seas. 

Roll on, young world, cool down thy brow, 

Finish out your age with geysers ; 

Ye tempests surge, flash lightnings. 

And pour o’er all your flooding waters; 

Ages on ages roll, cool down, young world, 

Heave your breasts, ye bending hills. 

Ye mighty earthquakes, the mountains heave ; 

Lift up your heads ! Oh ! ye hills, 

And ye oceans, find your place ! 

We have thus far traced the cosmos of the earth, 
from chaos to the dawn of geologic rock. Thus far we 
have built our history on isolated facts, our bark has been 
adrift in strange seas, but the compass of reason and 
logical causation has guided our course. Henceforth we 
can summon to our aid the testimony of the rocks. 

But before closing this chapter, let us open the Bible, 
and see if our reasoning agrees with the spirit utterances 
of religion. 

“His pavilion was dark waters and thick clouds of 
the skies” (primary condition of matter). “There went 
up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth 
devoured.” “ He rode upon a cherub and did fly.” “ He 
maketh a light to shine after him as out of a seething pot 
or caldron.” “He moveth his tail like a cedar, and the 
sinews of his stones are wrapped together.” “Out of 
his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out.” 
“A light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eye-lids of 
the morning” (the earth a comet). “By watering he 


CREATION OF THE EARTH. 


147 


weareth the thick cloud, he scattereth his bright cloud.” 
“ With clouds he covereth the light.” “He bindeth up 
the waters in his thick clouds ” (birth of the chaotic world 
from a comet). “He bowed the heavens and came 
down” (condensation of nebula). “lie commanded the 
sun not to shine by the clouds which went between” (the 
outer depths of vapor). “At the brightness which was 
before him his thick clouds passed hailstones and coals of 
fire” (rock crystals falling from the black sky into the 
cometous or fiery nucleus of the world). “He maketli 
the deep to boil like a pot.” “He maketh the sea like a 
pot of ointment” (first and molten condition of granite). 
“Sharp stones were under his feet, he joineth them one 
to another, they sticketh fast together” (cooling and 
hardening of rock). “The hills moved and were shaken, 
whereupon the foundations of the earth were fastened ” 
(breaking of the earth’s early crust). “He made the 
clouds a garment thereof, and thick clouds a swaddling 
band for it.” “In thick clouds he cometh down and 
gathereth the waters together.” “Channels of water 
were seen, and the foundations of the earth discovered ” 
(falling waters, cooling and forming the granite rock). 
“He thundereth marvelously with his voice” (earth¬ 
quakes; struggle of fire and water). “He shot up his 
arrows, and scattered them ” (terrific volcanoes of the 
early time). “The hills moved, and he said, Let dry 
land appear.” “He shut up the sea with doors, and 
said, Hither shalt thou come, and here shall thy proud 
waters be stayed.” “Great things doetli be, which we 
cannot comprehend/' 


CHAPTER IX. 


SUDDEN POLAR CHANGES OF THE EARTH — ITS CRUST BROKEN 

LIKE A CRUMBLING SHELL —THE DELUGE — A KEY TO MANY 

THINGS IN THIS BOOK. 

“He shaketli the earth out of her place. 

And the pillars thereof tremble ; 

He treadeth upon the waves of the sea, 

And overturneth the earth.” 

Dana has well said, “An atom in immensity is im¬ 
mensity itself in its revelations of truth, and science gath¬ 
ered from our small sphere is the science of all spheres.” 
In like manner by observing the phenomena of the pres¬ 
ent, we learn the history of the past and foresee the future. 
We therefore invite the reader’s attention to the study for 
a moment of a mechanical principle which will throw 
floods of living light upon what has been inexplicable 
mystery. 

Why does the earth re.volve on her axis, producing 
every twenty-four hours, day and night? We have 
shown in a general way that causation is eternal, but let 
us observe more closely the chain of causes which impart 

V 

motion to the earth. 

Heat expands, and cold contracts; this principle 
applies to the earth’s atmosphere. The sun shines upon 
one side of .the earth only, consequently expanding the 
[ 148 ] 







EL1PSE AND POLAR POSITION 

OF THE EARTH 

CAUSE OF ORBITAL AND AXIAL MOTION 
AND THE FORMATION OF SUDDEN 
| NEW POLAR CENTERS 

I SEE CHAPTER fl 

\ NINE // 


8>W 


Motion and Position of the Earth Around the Sun. 


[ 149 ] 










CAUSE OF THE EARTH’S AXIAL MOTION. 


151 


atmosphere- on the side of his rays , 1 while the opposite 
side is cooled and contracted. Suppose the earth did not 
revolve on her axis, how great would be the condensation 
of air on the side of perpetual night, how much its expan¬ 
sion on the side of perpetual sun ! If one hundred miles 
represented the depth of air on the side of perpetual night, 
one thousand miles would scarcely represent its depth on 
the side of perpetual sun. 

It was Archimedes who said that with a lever long 
enough, he would move the world ; we have in this law a 
mighty leverage power to do something. 

Suppose the earth did not revolve on her axis, would 
it be possible for the atmosphere to remain motionless? 
Would not the cold, dense winds of night move in steady 
currents towards the land of perpetual hot sun, where, 
expanded by his rays, they would rise far upward, and 
again seek to find a level by moving in opposite direc¬ 
tions? This would be the case if the earth had always 
been motionless and a perfect globe, but beginning with 
motion, and broken as is her surface with hills and 
mountains, such atmospheric currents could not long 
remain balanced, but trembling between adverse influ- 


1 The atmosphere of the earth was formerly supposed to extend up¬ 
ward only about forty-five miles. It has been recently demonstrated, how¬ 
ever, that it extends upward and surrounds the earth to the depth of five or 
six hundred miles, decreasing, of course, in density as we go upward. 

One can form an idea of what we mean by use of the term “ expansion 
of atmosphere under the rays of the sun,” by the following experiment: 
Hold a piece of burning paper under an inverted glass tumbler, and when 
the inclosed air is thoroughly heated, quickly place the tumbler, still inverted, 
in a saucer of cold water. The inclosed cooling and contracting air will 
draw up the water, and nearly fill the tumbler. The expansion of air on the 
sun-lit side of the earth and condensation on the other, is the Herculean 
power which causes the earth with its atmosphere to revolve. 


152 


SUDDEN POLAR CHANGES OF THE EARTH. 


ences, move in one direction around the earth, the whole 
atmosphere pursuing a circuitous, uniform motion around 
the globe. 

This is the exact scientific truth ; the whole atmos¬ 
phere of the earth moves with a terrific velocity from 
west to east, sweeping at the rate of twenty miles a 
minute, a speed more rapid than that of a cannon-ball; 
making a complete circuit around the earth every twenty- 
four hours. It would be impossible for the earth to 
remain motionless acted on at every point by this mighty 
force. One steady hurricane sweeping over her plains, 
uprooting her forests and wrecking her mountains ; this 
is the force that causes the earth to revolve on her axis. 

In other words, the heat and light of the sun compel 
the atmosphere to revolve, and the atmosphere holds the 
earth in its embrace, causing her to revolve in unison ; 
hence the terrific motion of the earth’s atmosphere is 
imperceptible to us. 

The tendency, however, of the atmosphere is to 
move faster than the earth, as the general direction of 
trade-winds is from west to east ; this is true also of the 
ocean currents, by the friction of atmosphere, modified 
like the trade-winds by the location of islands and 
continents. 

Let us now explain the cause of the earth’s orbital 
revolution — the reasons why the earth revolves around 
the sun every three hundred sixty-five and one fourth 
days. In solving these problems, floods of light will 
come in. 

We have seen that the atmosphere revolves with the 
earth every twenty-four hours, and that it is forever ex¬ 
panded under the sun’s rays, and eternally contracted 
on the opposite side ; therefore the volume of expanded 


CAUSE OF ORBITAL MOTION. 


153 


air is forever moving towards the east side ; while the 
heavier volume of condensed air is eternally coming 
in, on the west side, creating almost a vacuum on the 
one side, a weight on the other, like a mighty wedge, 
with terrific force, forever inserted on the one side, and 
as perpetually withdrawn from the other. This force 
carries the earth around the sun every three hundred 
sixty-five and one fourth days ; for let it be remembered 
that space is filled with ether, without which it would be 
impossible for wave motions of light and heat imparted 
by the sun to reach the earth . 1 

If these are the true causes of the earth’s axial and 
orbital motion, it will follow that the greater the amount 
of a planet’s atmosphere, relative to the size and weight 
of the central solid, the more rapid will be the planet’s 
rotary motion, also her forward movement around the 
sun ; and the more rapid a planet's axial and orbital mo¬ 
tion, relative to size and weight, the greater its distance 
from the sun. 


1 Planets revolve, but comets do not. Planets have a central globe or 
shell which comets do not have. The atmospheric portion of planets is for¬ 
ever expanded on the side presented to the sun and condensed on the other, 
causing a circuitous motion of atmosphere around them, and therefore their 
own axial rotations. The rotund nucleus of planets, and which comets do 
not possess, is the reason why planets rotate and comets do not. The sun 
expands comets, as it does our atmosphere, when they approach him, and 
therefore becoming lighter, they rise in the ether or medium in which they 
float; by this force driven outward from the sun, they are again cooled and 
contracted, becoming heavier, relative to the medium which supports them. 
Hence the motion of comets is always that of an ellipse to and from the sun, 
carried around the sun, by his axial rotation and the rotation of the sur¬ 
rounding ether. Such would be the movements of the earth with her atmos¬ 
phere, were it not for the rotund shell ; her whole substance as a cosmos 
would be expanded by the sun's rays, by which she would be driven outward 
from him; when cooled and contracted, she would oscillate’again towards him, 
pursuing an ellipse like all comets around the sun. Such Avould be the 
motion of the earth were it not for her rotund shell, around which, impelled 


154 


SUDDEN POLAR CHANGES OF THE EARTH. 


This principle holds true with all the planets ; those 
with less atmosphere, like Mercury and Yenus, revolve 
near the sun, while the planets composed mainly of 
nebula, or atmospheric matter, like Saturn, Uranus, and 
Neptune, pursue paths the most remote from the sun. 

Undoubtedly the ether currents imparted by the 
sun’s own rotary motion was the original cause, and still 
accelerates the motion of all planets. 

The ether, or medium of light and heat from the sun 
to his planets, is in a sense the transparent outer envelope 
of the sun himself, decreasing in density like our atmos¬ 
phere, with the ratio of distance, and extending far be¬ 
yond the most remote planet. This is the resisting 
medium to comets, and the substance in which the planets 
float, with distance from the sun measured by their 
specific gravity ; the bulky, nebulous planets occupying 
positions remote from the sun, and the more dense, like 
Yenus and Mercury, positions near the sun. 

Let us now explain the cause of the earth’s elliptic 
day, and the consequent sudden change of the earth’s 
polar axis. 

by the sun, the atmosphere revolves, forever expanded on the side towards 
him, and forever contracted on the other, causing by the rotation of atmos¬ 
phere the earth to revolve on her axis. 

When a comet has formed a central rotund shell, sufficiently fixed and 
stable and of sufficient dimensions to obstruct the sun’s rays, and allow ex¬ 
pansion of atmosphere on the one side and contraction on the other, a cir¬ 
cuitous motion of atmosphere around that body is the result, and the globe, 
wrapped in the arms of its atmosphere, commences axial rotation and orbital 
motion around the sun. 

Such is the transition stage or birth of a planet from a comet, and such 
transitional periods have been witnessed by each and all the planets, not 
alone in the formation of a nucleus or rotund crust, nor in the condensation 
of the cometous nebula, but also in an entire change of motion. The eccen¬ 
tric, wild, wandering course of the comet ceases ; the embryonic days are 
passed, the evolving germ in the womb of nature is born to life ; a planet, 
with revolving tread and proud, conservative motion, commences her long- 
career around the sun. 


CAUSE OF ORBITAL MOTION. 


155 


The revolution of the atmosphere around the earth 
would naturally fix the earth’s axis at right angles to the 
sun, and carry the earth in a perfect circle around him, 
for the earth’s upper atmosphere is always revolving in a 
direct line towards the sun. 

By the slightest nodding of the earth on her poles, 
attracted by other heavenly bodies, she would be forced 
to the commencement of an elliptic orbit, and the ellipse 
would increase with the ratio of polar displacement. 

When the earth once began to deviate from a circle, 
in obedience to the dipping position of her poles, momen¬ 
tum would increase the displacement at a given ratio, 
consequently increasing the variance of axial rotation 
from that of the revolving atmosphere, for the upper 
atmosphere always revolves in a direct line to and from 
the sun, regardless of the earth’s axial rotation. 

At the equinoxes the earth and her atmosphere re¬ 
volve together in harmony, but the earth, driven on by 
the peculiar position of her poles, soon changes her 
position relative to the sun, and relative also to her own 
revolving atmosphere, which soon revolves diagonally 
around the earth, crossing the equator. 

When the earth and her atmosphere revolve in uni¬ 
son, their motions are imperceptible to us ; but when they 
diverge, it gives rise to currents of air apparently moving 
either north, south, or otherwise, according as the motions 
of the earth and its atmosphere diverge. 

With other modifying causes, the varied winds on 
the surface of the earth can be explained on this hy¬ 
pothesis . 1 


1 The weather prophets of the future will not be dreaming somnambulists, 
but as scientific, exact, and unerring in their predictions of wind and weather, 
storms and tornadoes, rains, sunshine, heat, and cold, as the astronomers are 

y 


156 


SUDDEN POLAR CHANGES OF THE EARTH. 


When the earth shall have dipped on her polar axis 
to an angle of more than forty-five degrees, creating a 
wide deviation between her rotation and the rotary motion 
of her atmosphere, the earth’s momentum must yield to 
the atmospheric forces, changing her polar centers, and 
forming a new axis of motion. 

Hence the earth is carried for ages in a constantly 
increasing ellipse, in accord with her dipping axis, until 
her position and rotary motion are so widely in conflict 
with the revolving motion of her atmosphere, that the 
earth’s momentum is overthrown, and the earth’s rotary 
motion righted to the revolving motion of her atmosphere 
by a sudden catastrophe, changing the axis of the earth, 
and forcing her in a new orbit around the sun. 

We cannot believe in the theory of M. Lanard, that 
the earth slowly oscillates from pole to pole by the 
weight of accumulating ice, although accepted by Darwin, 
Hooker, and other scientists. If the earth has changed, 
or will ever change, her center of motion, it must be by 
some sudden catastrophe. Every law of momentum would 
compel the earth to revolve on established centers, long 
after the earth’s atmosphere was revolving widely at 
variance with her motion. 

It is a conceded fact that storms and tornadoes move not in straight 
lines, hut in the segment of a circle. A giant timber “ windfall ” through 
Northern Wisconsin, on the average three hundred feet wide, and more than 
sixty miles in extent, is as exact a part of an immense circle, as if a 
giant wheel, like the ring of Saturn, rotating around the earth, deviating from 
the earth’s motion, had dipped down and touched the landscape. 

The atmosphere holding the earth in its embrace, revolves rapidly 
around it, and is the cause of her rotation ; but the motion of the atmos¬ 
phere never deviates from a direction towards the sun, while the earth 
oscillates in her revolving motion from north to south, from south to north, 
from summer to winter, and from winter to summer, causing every deviation 
of wind. When this subject shall be thoroughly understood, the predictions 
of scientific weather prophets will be unerring and exact. 


CAUSE OF POLAR CHANGES. 


157 


When the earth shall have tipped on her axis to 
an angle of more than forty-five degrees, the earth’s 
momentum must yield to the new line of atmospheric 
currents which always pursue a course in a straight line 
towards the sun, like the revolving rings of Saturn always 
towards the sun. 

In the present ellipse of the earth the sun virtually 
crosses the equator at the spring and fall equinoxes, shin¬ 
ing straight down on the north temperate zone in July and 
August, and straight down on the south temperate zone 
in January ; hence in July the earth’s atmosphere pursues 
a course diagonally around the earth from the north to 
the south temperate zone, and this is true in a reverse 
order in January. The upper currents of air are forever 
moving in a wheel perpendicular towards the sun, re¬ 
gardless of the earth’s axial positions. 

When the earth shall have dipped on her axis to an 
angle of more than forty-five degrees, a sudden recon¬ 
struction of axis will be the result; then woe to the 
inhabitants of this earth, in the language of Job, 

“When he causeth a mighty wind to blow, 

When he treadeth upon the waves of the sea, 

When he overturneth mountains in his anger, 

When he sendeth out his waters 
And they overturneth the earth.” 

The field we explore being a new one, and astronom¬ 
ical observations, relating to polar positions and eccen¬ 
tricities of the earth thousands of years ago, being meager 
and uncertain, it is impossible to arrive at definite figures 
as to the time required for the earth to complete her 
tremendous circle , 1 or what period in the future, when 

1 The north star deviates one degree in about seven hundred years, and 
it is computed that in one hundred and twenty-eight thousand years, the 
great star Vega will have become the north star. In the possession of the 


SUDDEN POLAR CHANGES OF THE EARTH. 


58 


the earth shall have arrived at a fatal inclination, does 
not admit of more than an approximate guess ; the great¬ 
est polar displacement of the earth is not yet more than 
twenty or twenty-five degrees. 

Assuming the figures of Darwin, Mr. Croll, Dr. 
Hooker, and other geologists to be correct, who place the 
last glacial epoch at two hundred and forty thousand 
years ago; and assuming that the glacial era was the 
commencement of the earth’s present orbit, the result of 
her last polar displacement; assuming also that it has 
required the above period of time for the earth, dipping 
on her poles, at a given ratio, to change her position from 
an equatorial line towards the sun, to the present angle of 
twenty degrees displacement,—it will require another 
period of at least two hundred and forty thousand years 
from the present, before the earth, in her slow changes, 
shall have reached the fatal angle of forty-five degrees 
and fatal polar inclination. 

On the subject of the above reckoning, we are not 
dogmatic ; believing, as we do, that the tremendous crisis 
of an axial and orbital change, by some other planet 
may be precipitated upon our system, involving the earth 
in the necessity of the establishment of a new axis and 
a new orbit around the sun, before the earth itself has 
reached the fatal polar inclination. 

Mars or Jupiter may arrive first at a fatal polar incli¬ 
nation, and reeling like a drunkard from his orbit, involve 

equinoxes,, the equator meets the sun a little earlier each year. Two thou¬ 
sand years ago, in the time of Hipparchus, the sun at the vernal equinox was 
in the constellation Aries. At this present time, when the sun crosses the 
vernal equinox, he is in the constellation Pisces, and two thousand years 
hence at the vernal equinox he will be in the constellation Aquarius. Conse¬ 
quently, the earth, year by year, is changing her position relative to the stars. 
Such are the established facts of astronomy. 


SIGNS OF THE APPROACHING CATASTROPHE. 


159 


the whole planetary system in the unbalanced crisis of 
rotary and orbital changes. 

A sudden change of orbit and axis, brought on 
aforetime, by Mars or any other planet, the consequences to 
our world will be less disastrous and appalling, than if by 
the lapse of a longer period the earth itself arrives at the 
fatal angle of forty-five degrees, necessitating a change 
in her rotary motion and position almost from pole to 
pole ; a circumstance that would involve as general de¬ 
struction of life as in the last great deluge ; breaking like 
a crust the earth's very shell, to emit fire and lava from 
every seam, accompanied by a tremendous rotary hurri¬ 
cane, tidal wave, and flood. 

Should the catastrophe be precipitated prematurely 
by another planet, the consequences will be less severe, 
yet appalling. Smoke and ashes, fire and cinders, will 
issue from a thousand old and new volcanic craters; 
steam and vapors, arising from fiery contact, will ob¬ 
scure the sun and darken the heavens, and the agitated 
oceans will hurl their waters in mountain waves over the 
islands, and break down the rock-barriers of the shores, 
ingulfing numerous cities. A premature crisis, involving 
the earth, brought on by another planet, is clearly de¬ 
clared by numerous passages running through both the 
Old and New Testaments. 

“ Except those days should be shortened, 

There would no flesh be saved ; but for the 
Elect’s sake, those days shall be shortened ; 

Stars shall fall from heaven. For I shake 
Not the earth only, but also heaven. The sun 
Shall be darkened, and the moon shall not 
Give her light. The earth shall reel to and 
Fro like a drunkard. The sea and waves roaring. 

He will smite the great house with breaches ; 

It shall be drowned as by the flood of Egypt.” 


160 


SUDDEN l’OLAJK. CHANGES OF THE EARTH. 


Philosophy, however, assures us that the unbalanced 
earth will settle down again from the appalling disaster, 
on new axial centers, in a new and closer orbit around 
the sun, the source of all life and advancement. Then 
will have begun the eighth day or epoch in the history 
of the world, which will develop a serenity and beauty 
unknown to the present; the human brain and the human 
heart will respond to the divine influx, with its rays of 
light and love ; and the final result is also pictured by 
numerous paragraphs in the Old and New Testaments. 

“The light of the moon shall be as the light 
Of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be 
Seven-fold in the day the Lord bindetli up the 
Breech of his people, and healeth the stroke 
Of their wound. Lift up your heads, for your 
Redemption draweth nigh. Knowledge shall be 
Increased. The Lord God will cause righteousness 
And praise to spring forth before all nations.” 

Were it not for the complications of the world with 
other planets, scientists might discover data upon which 
accurately to determine the time, as did the ancients, 
when Noah and his family entered into the ark. 

This is a subject of tremendous importance to future 
generations, to ascertain the exact time and prepare for 
the approaching catastrophe. 

“Of the day and of the hour knoweth no man.” 

The moving polar inclination of the earth is slow, 
and her deviations, relative to the sun, can only be recog¬ 
nized by comparing widely-separated ages ; for between 
the catastrophies, when the earth has changed her polar 
axis, lie the tremendous periods of time which have been 
the “seven days’’ of that eternity since God began the 


EVIDENCE OF SUDDEN CHANGES. 


161 


creation of the earth. With him time is marked by great 
revolutions in events, cycles of mighty ages, 

“ Way-marks of two eternities.” 

The geologic evidence that the earth has six times 
changed her polar centers ; the intervening periods repre¬ 
senting long ages, will be overwhelmingly demonstrated 
when w r e come to deal with geology. 

For the present, we will confine ourselves to the 
proofs of the last change in the earth’s axis, the evi¬ 
dences of which are clear, and leave no room for doubt. 

But first let us inquire, What would be the results to 
the earth, consequent upon a sudden change of her axis 
and rotary motion ? 

The earth is twenty-six miles further through her 
equatorial than her polar diameter, caused by her rapid 
axial rotation, drawing the poles together, and bulging at 
the equator. By this force, the Mississippi River is driven 
up a hill, nearly three miles high, at a very rapid rate,— 
its mouth being that distance further from the earth’s 
center than its source. If the world revolved faster, the 
oceans would rush to the equator, burying the tallest 
mountains, and leaving the polar regions bare. If the 
world should rotate more slowly, the poles would be sub¬ 
merged, and the equator become an arid waste. 

A new axis, suddenly established in temperate re¬ 
gions, and the consequent bulging of a new equatorial 
belt, perhaps encircling former polar regions, would 
change, accordingly, the line of centrifugal force, and 
carry the oceans of the old equator in mighty floods to 
the new. The pressure of the earth’s internal fires would, 
therefore, become unbalanced from without, and the 
whole crust of our globe broken up and distorted; conti- 


162 


SUDDEN POLAR CHANGES OF THE EARTH. 


nents overrun with flood and fire ; mountains uplieaved, 
or sunk forever into the bowels of the earth’s molten sea ; 
old polar continents, brought suddenly under the glare of 
a genial sun, and flooded with water from the hot equa¬ 
torial regions, would cause a mighty glacial epoch ; while 
icebergs would be transported, loaded with boulders, far 
off into other waters ; and melting, discharge their con¬ 
tents ; while the new polar regions, located perhaps in 
old tropic or temperate zones, would be overtaken with 
sudden cold,— life destroyed and stiffening with the blast 
of a terrible "winter, preserved amid continents of form¬ 
ing ice. 

By our studies of the earth’s orbital, axial, and 
elliptic motions, we have found the key which unlocks a 
thousand mysteries. 

Here is the explanation of the sudden transitions of 
the geologic ages ; the evenings and the mornings of the 
“days” of God’s handiwork in the creation of this earth. 

Here is the explanation of that mysterious “gla¬ 
cial epoch,” when, according to Agassiz, Dana, Lyell, 
Hitchcock, and others, New England was buried deep in 
ice ; and even the Middle and Southern States, chiseled, 
as if overrun with huge plains of ice ; the canyons of the 
Bocky Mountains cut deep by undercurrents of water, 
issuing from overlying strata of ice; boulders and drift 
carried and deposited far off by melting icebergs. 

This ice accumulated when the United States, with 
its center in the State of Utah, was a polar region. The 
precipitation of salt, as the result of continued freezing 
of the waters of the old alkaline oceans and later evapo¬ 
ration, has left in Utah immense salt seas and beds of 
salt; and distributed through Colorado, Kansas, Montana, 
Dakota, and Nebraska, various alkaline deposits pointing 



The Earth Before the Deluge, with the then North Pole in the 

State of Utah. [163] 













A KEY TO MYSTERIES. 


165 


back to her age of arctic cold, polar ice, and a salt sea 
birth. The upper strata of earth, in these States, also 
contain, in abundance, the fossil remains of polar fauna 
and flora, which are distributed also, more or less, in all 
the surrounding States. 

Here is the explanation of mastodons, elephants, and 
other tropical animals exhumed from the ice of arctic 
regions, in such a state of preservation that dogs feed on 
their flesh ; and it has been recently discovered that our 
own Alaska is a burial-ground of tropical animals ; the 
earth, in places, being literally covered with petrified 
bones of elephants and mastodons that once inhabited 
the hot clime. 

These ice-entombed Siberian mastodons and elephants, 
as well as the Alaskan fossils, inhabited only tropical cli¬ 
mates, subsisting on tropical vegetation, which is also 
exhumed, both frozen and fossil, in abundance with them. 

Greenland’s icy mountains, with all the ice-buried 
continents of the north, were once covered with verdure, 
where grew the banana, palm leaf, and fern; under 
whose genial skies myriads of living things sported in 
their happy existence; among the tangled brakes of 
whose hot, marshy forests mastodons roamed, the undis¬ 
puted kings. 

During this period in the history of the past, the 
then north temperate zone was the belt of a high human 
civilization, as written in the ruins of South America and 
Mexico, and traditions of the lost isles of the Atlantis, 
with its Garden of Eden sunk in the Atlantic Ocean. 
But more anon. 

Perhaps the grave of human civilization lies buried 
beneath the polar continents of ice and snow, fenced in 
by the barriers of frigid cold, beyond which human daring 


166 


SUDDEN POLAR CHANGES OF THE EARTH. 


and self-sacrificing bravery cannot pass; sacred these 
graves from the desecration of man. 

Who shall touch the wand of science, and compel 
the ice-covered antipodes of our world to give us back 
the story of their balmy days ? 

Here is the explanation of the traditions of every 
race and people, of every tribe and tongue ; reaching 
back through the dim vista of ages to the threshold of 
recollections in human aforetime; when the windows of 
heaven were opened, and the bowels of the great deep 
broken up, and God said, 

“ Behold I, even I, do bring a flood of water 
Upon the earth to destroy all flesh wherein is 
The breath of life from under heaven ; 

And everything that is in the earth shall die.” 

Old ocean breaks from her rock-bound barriers, and 
rolls death-dealing waves in multitudinous mountains; 
ingulfing continents, cities, civilizations ; tiny birds and 
the denizens of the forests, are alike overtaken and in¬ 
gulfed in the universal maelstrom of flood and fire. The 
bowels of the great deep emit sulphurous flame and poi¬ 
sonous gases, and the inhabitants of the sea perish in 
countless millions, leaving huge beds of their fossil re¬ 
mains, piled in strange discord, in evidence of a violent 
death. 

Perchance some strong-built ship, freighted with a 
few precious lives, rode above the swelling billows, hero¬ 
ically battling with the elements of death; putting their 
trust no longer in the loadstone needle, which fluctuates 
wildly and excitedly, as if in deep feeling and sympathy 
with the surrounding turmoil and death ; but guided by 
some Bethlehem star, land after many days in a new 

clime and country. 

«/ 


THE N0ACH1AN DELUGE. 


167 


“Make thee an ark of gopher wood ; 

And Noah did as the Lord commanded. 

And the ark rested on the seventh 
Month upon the mountains of Ararat.” 

Howsoever, portions of the earth would escape where 
crossed the old and the new temperate and tropical belts ; 
here life would be preserved and perpetuated from age to 
age, in spite of these terrible catastrophies of nature. 

With these great convulsions, which the earth has 
already witnessed a number of times, dividing the long- 
epochs of her history into the “ seven days” of Genesis, 
she has taken positions nearer and nearer the sun, having 
assumed a new axis, at the perihelion of her ellipse, at 
which point she has begun each new circle and orbit 
around the sun. 

These new positions have been caused by the lessening 
of the earth’s atmosphere and consequent increase of the 
solid bulk of our planet, through the growth of vegeta¬ 
tion, feeding on the carbon of air ; and other condensing 
causes have slowly formed the oceans and solid crust of 
the globe out of a primitive and chaotic nebula. And as 
our atmosphere becomes still more ethereal by the deposit 
of its gaseous elements through vegetable growth into 
solid earth, she will assume positions nearer the sun. 

This is true of all the planets ; they are moving in a 
round of infinite changes of birth, growth, perihelion, 
and, finally, of death and dissolution in the sun. 


CHAPTER X. 


CHEMICAL BASIS OF LIFE —MAN’S MATERIAL CHEMISTRY IS GOD’S 

IMMATERIAL GEOMETRY. 

“And I saw a pure river of water of life 
Proceeding out of the throne of God.” 

Behold the frost-work on the window, in picturesque 
imitation of landscapes ; the mold on the cellar wall, 
waving to every zephyr ; the foliage of hill and dale ; — 
each the antitype of surrounding causes. 

See lichens feeding upon rock and incrusting it with 
their own stony forms; corals building reefs; shell 
fishes, armadillos, and turtles, covered with huge plates 
of stone ; adapted each to its environments. 

See atoms moving in obedience to affinities and re¬ 
pulsions ; motes in the sunbeam ; the flood of insect life ; 
feathered songsters of the groves ; all echoing back their 
environments. 

Behold atoms, fishes, reptiles,— the animal kingdom, 
— humanitv ; all with senses measured to their state and 
place, and crystallizing into types, classes, kingdoms. 

Behold this human-mold ; in its cobw r ebs of brick, 
its temple-decked cities ; each atom environed ; and the 
whole crystallizing into classes, religions, governments. 

Look again with the telescope into this upper dust of 
the eternities, the frost-work in the ethereal sky ; yon 
Milky Way, weaving a foliage to the music of zephyrs ; 
dots of crystallized light, in fire-fly swarms; each atom 
[ 168 ] 


environments of life. 


169 


chained to its place by environments, forming crystal 
constellations ; in exact arrangement, crystal with crystal, 
forming systems, and infinities of systems ; and all living 
and moving according to environments. 

Look again, with the microscope, into the infinite 
and boundless atom ; behold here worlds and systems of 
worlds, life and forms of life ; all chained to their place 
and sphere by environments. Study here, in the rain 
drop, the possibilities of discovery, when powerful tele¬ 
scopes shall have brought near and made visible remote 
suns hidden away in the infinite depths ; wide enough, 
our sun between, to separate heaven and hell. 

Stay here, and view from afar these infinitely varied 
pictures ; for they are the shadows of God. See every¬ 
where activity and life ; all things, within and without, 
manifesting the consciousness and soul of environments ; 
the Infinite in the finite and the finite in the Infinite ; 
mind within mind, and shades of mind; soul within 
soul, reflecting soul,— God, 

“Higher than heaven, what canst thou know ? 

Deeper than hell, what canst thou do ? ” 

This volume will show, in its rounded whole, that a 
unity of thought and of soul, of properties and attributes, 
pervades the whole organic and inorganic kingdoms of 
matter, of our world, and of all worlds. Existence 
everywhere is relative; 


“In God, no high, no low, no great, no small ; 

He bounds, extends, and equals all.” 

Suppose an inhabitant of the great star Vega, cor¬ 
responding to the body on which he resides, to be fifty 


170 


CHEMICAL BASIS OF LIFE. 


miles in height, with body and limbs proportioned ac¬ 
cordingly. 

Suppose such a being could visit other worlds, and 
should land, first on some star midway between his own 
and our earth, and find the inhabitants mere dwarfs, 
being only one mile in height; would this make them 
contemptible, if he reflected that such little creatures 
might still think and reason ? And when he learned that 
these puny beings were short-lived, passing but one 
fiftieth of the period of his own years between the cradle 
and the grave, would it not seem to him that this was 
like dying as soon as one was born ? Should he next 
visit the earth, and by the aid of a microscope discover 
human-animalcules on its surface, which were so short¬ 
lived that they died before he had time to examine them, 
could he believe that intelligence belonged to such infini¬ 
tesimal insects ? 

The above is but an ideal illustration of the relative 
nature of existence, and how little we can know of the 
reality of things out of our state and place. The infini¬ 
tesimal beings hidden away, beyond the power of the 
microscope, are, perhaps, as vast, from the stand-point of 
their environments, as we. 

Who shall say that even the mighty expanse of the 
universe, as viewed by God, is not as finite as the 
rain drop ? 

Chemistry affirms that atoms of matter possess cer¬ 
tain molecular forces, repelling or attracting each other ; 
and that chemically uniting, they assume certain unerr¬ 
ing geometric forms and positions in reference to other 
atoms. 

By use of the word “atom,” we mean those forms 
which to human sense appear small. 


god’s geometry the human chemistry. 171 

But geometry cannot distinguish between the circle 
of the universe, the circle of the earth, or the circle of an 
atom ; it divides them alike into latitudes and longitudes, 
degrees, minutes, squares, triangles, prisms, and infinite 
angles of subdivision ; but it discovers no difference in 
their sizes. Erring finite sense, however, from the stand¬ 
point of its environments, says, here an atom, and there 
a sun. 

The geometric forms of matter are presented to us in 
countless numbers ; but chemical crystallization discovers 
certain systems in the primordial shape of which depends 
the form and arrangement of solids, liquids, or gases. 

Salt crystallizes in cubes, nitrate of potash in needles, 
mica in leaves, liquids in various ovals, gases in nearly 
globes, electricity in zig-zags, and light in straight lines. 

It is probable that all chemical substances differ only 
in their geometry or plan of structure ; and by an infi¬ 
nitely complex geometry, we have an infinitely complexed 
chemistry ; therefore an infinitely complexed universe. 

Chemistry is therefore the manifestation, to us the 
materialization, of geometry — the synthesis of God’s con¬ 
sciousness, manifest in the material universe; which, 
viewed from the divine stand-point, is volatile and fluid — 
a principle, a law, and not, as we see it, cold objective 
facts. 

Every atom of this universe has a negative and a 
positive pole, an attractive and a repellant side, a light 
and a dark, a bass and a tenor ; if you please, a sexuality 
of sides ; it is this that causes the atom to unite with other 
atoms, in a prescribed manner, compelling crystallization 
to assume fixed and definite forms. It is this law which 
builds up the snow-flake with such unerring exactness ; 
frost-work on the window ; stalactites, hanging in inde- 


172 CHEMICAL BASIS OF LIFE. 

scribable variety of richness and beauty — crystalline 
forests, with every atom arranged in reference to every 
other atom, and waving its foliage to environments ; it 
is this that builds up the cell of all life, and compels cell 
to unite with cell, in fixed and unerring laws, producing 
the moving, flood of animal and human life. 

How living the instincts of atoms ; how intelligent 
their activities, as each takes its place in a prescribed 
manner, and acts its part in reference to other atoms ! 

Every atom in this universe is sexed; yet affinities 
for unlike atoms are often stronger than for their own. 
Oil will leave its own companionship to mix with alkali; 
and carbon leaps, with terrible force, to find its equiva¬ 
lent of oxygen ; how like the union of the human sexes, 
atom selecting atom, and uniting in a fixed and definite 
manner. 

How living the microscopic as well as the telescopic 
atoms of the universe ; each of which has a geometric 
and exact form, a positive and a negative pole, a repellant 
and an attractive force, affinities and repulsions, with 
capacity of choice for other atoms. 

How closely allied these living, moving, intelligent 
activities to the activities of the moving intelligence we 
call humanity ! 

We must, therefore, regard atoms as the simple 
geometric home of consciousness, each a ball or bundle 
of attributes, impelling them to certain unerring activi¬ 
ties ; having each, according to its consciousness, a defi¬ 
nite form, by which it is enabled to unite with other 
atoms, in simple or complex groups; or in infinitely 
heterogeneous, yet exact, arrangements. 

The propagation of arrangement, in atoms, depends 
upon ancestry or seed crystals ; and it is as difficult to de- 


PAKENTAGE OF ATOMS. 


173 


velop crystals without seed, as to produce life without 
eggs ; therefore the propagation of arrangement in atoms 
is governed by the same laws as the propagation of living 
things. 

This law of parentage, which governs the propagation 
of all life, extends down through the whole domain of 
nature, to the bottom of the crudest chemistry. It is the 
initial arrangement which determines the arrangement of 
the whole — the leaven which leavens the loaf — the 
ancestry of all progeny, high or low. 

This is the law by which suns multiply suns in the 
infinite universe ; by which worlds evolve worlds; by 
which life upon our globe multiplies itself; mineral crys¬ 
tals produce other crystals ; even to the formation and 
growth of iron, copper, lead, gold, and silver; the funda¬ 
mental chemical differences of which consist alone in the 
arrangement or geometry of atoms. 

Crude chemistry discovers no difference between 
croton-oil and sweet-oil; but arrangement, through vege¬ 
table growth, has produced in them combinations totally 
dissimilar. 

The ascending complexities in crystallization, rising 
in a scale nearer and nearer to life, are the result of 
crossings, producing higher and more complex crystals, 
until they ascend to the threshold of life. By this law of 
parentage in the arrangement of atoms, we find an ex¬ 
planation of various epidemic diseases. The air, from 
peculiar causes, becomes pregnant with atoms capable of 
multiplication in the human system ; not high enough to 
constitute life, but a mere arrangement of atoms below 
the threshold of life. 

Again : the relative proportion of elements, produc¬ 
ing a chemical compound, cannot be changed ; but there 

10 


174 CHEMICAL BASIS OF LIFE. 

is no end to the capabilities of crossings or amalgama¬ 
tions of chemical compounds. 

The laws which govern crossings in the animal 
kingdom reign as supreme here in chemistry as else¬ 
where. Elements of similarity must predominate over 
the elements of dissimilarity, and the more numerous the 
crossings, locking into one chemical compound a multiple 
of chemical elements, the nearer does that substance ap¬ 
proach life. 

In short, when the number of elements, by chemical 
crossings, become sufficient, that substance manifests the 
phenomena of life. 

To quote from Huxley : u Oxygen and nitrogen unite 
in given proportions to form air, oxygen and hydrogen 
unite in given proportions to form water, oxygen and 
carbon unite in given proportions to form carbonic acid, 
nitrogen and hydrogen unite in given proportions to form 
ammonia. When the compounds named, viz., water, air, 
ammonia, and carbonic acid, amalgamate and unite into 
one simple chemical substance, in given proportions, it 
gives rise to protoplasm, a substance manifesting the 
phenomena of life.” 

Protoplasm (a name implying the lowest, simplest 
forms of life) is therefore simply a complex, glutinous, 
globular crystal, simply a multiple of atoms, geometric¬ 
ally or chemically arranged into a minute cell or sac, 
with a central cavity, through which the principles of en- 
dosmose and exosmose begin to play, or secretion and 
excretion, thus manifesting the phenomena of life. Such 
crystals exist in infinite numbers, as the pure product of 
nature, and are the primary ova out of which all life 
has sprung, and the basis of the structure of all life. 


PROTOPLASM. 


-f /-T K 

1 ( 0 

It is protoplasm which produces the greasy feel at 
the bottom of stagnant water, and sometimes floats on the 
surface ; the mother of vinegar, the white and yolk of the 
egg, the globules of our life’s blood, the base of all cellu¬ 
lar structure of both vegetable and animal life, the clay 
of the potter, out of which all life is molded. 

Protoplasm contracts under the influence of electric¬ 
ity, it coagulates by heat, it yields the same response 
whether free in nature or in living tissue ; these ova 
are as varied in size, color, form, and character, as the 
ratio of the combinations of atoms which compose them. 

Protoplasm is constantly dying and being resolved 
into its constituent elements or atoms ; what is food to¬ 
day is the living tissue of to-morrow. Even mental proc¬ 
esses depend on the death or combustion of protoplasm ; 
every emotion of the brain feeds on tissue ; every thought 
of man costs him physical loss. Happily there is a source 
of supply ; vegetation can subsist upon crude chemical 
elements, creating, out of it, lower forms of protoplasm ; 
animal life transforms this vegetable protoplasm into 
higher forms, preparing it for transubstantiate human 
protoplasm. 

It may be a small thing to admit that the dull vital 
character of protoplasm is the result of the chemical char¬ 
acter of elements which compose it ; or that the dull vital 
action of fungus is the result of the properties of its proto¬ 
plasm ; but we can discover no logical stopping-place be¬ 
tween this admission and the sequence that all vital 
action, even to mental phenomena, is the result of the 
natural forces of its protoplasm, or of the chemical proper¬ 
ties of elements which supply it. 


CHAPTER XI. 


SPONTANEOUS LIFE —NO LIFE WITHOUT ANTECEDENT LIFE —THE 
FIRST LIVING THINGS THAT INHABITED THIS GLOBE. 

“And God said, Let the earth 
Bring forth the living creature.” 

Whence come the swarms of animalcula, developing 
in water the moment it becomes stagnant, infinite in vari¬ 
ety and number ; the minute beings that sometimes turn 
a landscape of snow black in one hour ; the parasites 
which infest other forms of life, and, dying, convert its 
substance into a moving sea of maggots ? It is answered. 
— From germs of a preceding life. The advocates of 
spontaneity have also made replies. 

We have neither space nor time to enter into the 
history of that battle which covers twenty centuries, in 
which great minds have been arrayed for or against spon¬ 
taneous life ; and the unlimited microscopic experiments 
of chemists, in which the victory on the part of the advo¬ 
cates of spontaneous life has been gained, and as repeat¬ 
edly lost. 

If we were not seeking for the truth, whatever the 
consequences ; if we were pleading the part of a lawyer, 
resorting to any means of substantiating a case, we could 
produce an array of statements from high authorities, re¬ 
sulting from experiments, that would carry conviction as 
to the every-day development of spontaneous life. 

[ l7 «J 


MOLD OF CORRUPTION. 


m 




For it is a known fact that water left free to the influ¬ 
ence of sun and air, soon swarms with living beings ; that 
an infusion of hay will become milky, within twenty-four 
hours, by the development of bacteria ; and it is of every¬ 
day experience, that it is difficult to prevent food from 
covering itself with mold ; that meat is apt to putrify and 
fill with maggots ; that differing solutions ferment and 
fill, like vinegar, with different types of living things. 

The opponents, however, of spontaneous life, have 
affirmed that this whole array of beings is the result of 
hatching of eggs thrown out by a former life, floating as 
germs in the air or water. 

In support of this position, they have shown that 
when substances have been heated sufficient to destroy 
germs, and hermetically confined in flasks, like ordinary 
canned meats and fruits, where the inclosed air has also 
been heated ; or even when the flasks are left open, and 
the opening connected with the air, by a tube turned 
downward, so as to furnish no receptaculum for falling 
germs ; or even when these heated flasks have been left 
wide open and covered with layers of cotton-wool, no ani- 
malcula, infusoria, or living thing made its appearance ; 
and here the advocates of spontaneity seemed for a time 
defeated, but they soon found a new battle-ground. 

Driven from fluids, heated and hermetically sealed, 
they took refuge in the air ! Whence come these germs 
which produce various types of life, according to the 
varied solutions into which they fell, and in which they 
developed ? 

The opponents of spontaneous life became amazed at 
the paradox of their position ; they had carried the battle¬ 
ground to the air and filled it with ova, capable of an 

13 


0 


178 


SPONTANEOUS LIFE. 


endless variety of development, according to the sub¬ 
stances into which they fell. 

And here stands the combat; the advocates of spon¬ 
taneous life facing the apparent absurdity that the atmos¬ 
phere, which they had regarded as a pure oxygenous 
compound, is everywhere swarming with ova,— proto¬ 
plasm,— or the germs of living things. But Tyndall has 
proven this absurdity to be nevertheless a reality ; he has 
demonstrated that the air we breathe is no better than a 
moving sea of extremely minute solid particles. These 
particles are destroyed by heat; they are strained off by 
cotton-wool; they require air and sunlight, the necessary 
conditions of all life for unfolding ; also contact with and 
nourishment from other substances for vitalization and de¬ 
velopment. 

Therefore while the ova of the beings that develop 
in liquids exist in their native state in the air, much of 
the microscopic life which fills the air is evolved from 
ova, or protoplasms of water ; as illustrated in the evolu¬ 
tion and development of the common mosquitoes, seen 
first as wigglers, swimming in water. 

Thus new conditions, with new environments, cause 
new developments in all the departments of life; and 
this is true, even to the highest; they as well as the 
lowest, are transformed by surrounding conditions. 

Thus it is, in the end, the evidences from micro¬ 
scopic and chemical experiments lock hands with logic ; 
and every mote in the sunbeam, as well as nucleated 
centers of water, become particles of life-tissue, ready for 
absorption, by roots and leaves of vegetation ; ready for 
transformation into the globules of our life’s blood, the 
tissue of our bodies, and the food supply of our brains; 
or ready to ‘assume an independent life when transplanted 


MAGGOT OF DECAY. 


179 


into favorable surroundings ; becoming the malaria of dis¬ 
ease, the germs of contagion, the animalcula of fermen¬ 
tation, the mold of decay, and the maggot of corruption. 

It is not necessary to array the experiments of Dr. 
Clark, who in his u Microscopic World” declares that 
various chemical substances produce various given types 
of animalcula and infusoria. Nor is it necessary to reit¬ 
erate arguments of past ages, which have had, at all 
times, advocates of spontaneous life ; even St. Paul de¬ 
claring in pointed language, 

“Thou fool ; that which thou sowest 
Is not quickened unless it die/’ 

Have we proven spontaneous life ? have we demon¬ 
strated that the elements produce it ? that it enters 
through the door of that highway over whose portals has 
been written — 

“ Omne vivum ex vivo” ? 

(No life without antecedent life.) 

that it springs, by the amalgamation of elements, from 
the protoplasm or living forces of nature? that the ele¬ 
ments, by an ascending series of amalgamation, produce 
it, and afterwards modify it ? 

Such was the dawn of life on this globe ; cycles of 
ages ago, when the cooling of granite rock made possible 
the paleozoic seas, life came ; spontaneous then, as now ; 
and filled air and water with multitudinous, minute mov¬ 
ing forms. 

When we look back through the dim vista of mighty 
ages to the very dawn of life on our globe ; when the air 
extended upward thousands of miles, and was thick with 
mineral and damp with moisture ; when the earth was 


ISO 


SPONTANEOUS LIFE. 


undergoing changes which can no more be enacted again 
than we can go back into our infancy, we find conditions 
more favorable for the development of spontaneous germs. 
Life came in a pure stream, 

“Proceeding out of the throne of God/’ 

the sequence of a mingling of his eternal elements. Long 
ages filed in stately columns to their tomb, constituting 
the morning shadows of a day ; and his elements crossed 
and recrossed, amalgamated and re-amalgamated, evolv¬ 
ing multitudinous types of spontaneous life. 

Grant that I have proven spontaneous life — that the 
early ages of our earth contained living germs, however 
closely allied to the activities of chemical atoms ; grant 
me the lowest possible germs of life ; and I will clothe 
our world with verdure ; fill the oceans and cover the 
plains with moving, sentient beings, and show you as the 
sequence of causation this map of human history. 









Tiie Mechanics of Life : The Eye, the Ear, 
the Heart, the Brain. 


[ 182 ] 



























CHAPTER XII. 


THE MECHANICS OF LIFE —THE EYE, THE EAR, THE HEART, THE 

BRAIN. 

“ In the image of God created he him.” 

Life is a union of a number of nature’s forces, and 
rises in the scale in the exact ratio of complexity. A liv¬ 
ing being is a combination of the living principles of mat¬ 
ter— a union of the forces of nature; and rises to the 
image of God when thought and reason become the re- 
ceptaculum of his thought; when it takes in the eternal 
principles of justice, mercy, sympathy, and love. 

Let us compare mental and vital physiology with 
natural philosophy. 

It has been said that “life is activity, is change, is 
motion ; ” and have we not shown that every atom of the 
universe is activity, is change, is motion ? 

It has been said that “life is a series of evolutions, 
from its inception to its dissolution ; ” and have we not 
found this to be true of atoms, worlds, and the universal 
law of things ? 

It has been said that “life is sexed, male and fe¬ 
male ; ” and have we not shown that every atom of our 
universe is sexed, possessing an attractive and a repellant 
pole, without which crystallization could not occur ? 

It has been said that “life multiplies and perpetuates 
itself ; ” and have we not found that crystals evolve other 
crystals, suns other suns ; and this to be a universal law 
of things? 


[183] 


184 


THE MECHANICS OF LIFE. 


It has been said that “life has the faculty of choice, 
loves and hates ; ” and does not all matter possess adhe¬ 
sions and repulsions; choosing associate atoms; repel- 
ing in the convulsions of nature, or grasping in friend¬ 
ship elements of affinity ? 

But, argues the skeptic, “Animals have instincts 
which they obey; ” and is this not true of atoms, or 
worlds, moving in their fixed orbits ? 

“But man has reason, as shown in the accomplish¬ 
ments of design ; ” and is there not everywhere evidences 
of design in nature ; as creation has struggled upward 
through long ages, evolving worlds and systems of 
worlds, life and forms of life ? 

“Yes; but man has risen above nature, in the con¬ 
sciousness of his ego , in the acquirement of an immortal 
soul; ” and have we not shown that the elements are 
eternal, existing as the simple manifestation of God’s 
consciousness ? 

Wherein do organic and inorganic principles differ ? 

Gravitation acts on living as on dead matter ; on the 
blood in our veins, as on a river ; fire and heat produce 
the same effects on organized as on unorganized tissues. 

Mastication is a process of mechanical grinding ; and 
does not differ from the methods by which nature ground 
the geologic rock, and prepared the way for geologic life. 

Absorption is the same as capillary attraction ; the 
same phenomenon is manifest in sponge or dry earth as 
in living tissue. 

Assimilation is but another name for chemical 
affinities and adhesion ; in the same manner as chemical 
atoms choose associate atoms, living tissue chooses associ¬ 
ate tissue. 


NATURAL AND VITAL PHYSIOLOGY. 


185 


Secretion and excretion are identical with the chem¬ 
ical processes of endosmose and exosmose. 

Nerve fluid is identical with electricity. It is devel¬ 
oped by this whole chemical and frictional human battery, 
in which all the nerves ramify to and from the brain, like 
so many telegraphic wires, where is stationed the great 
negative and positive poles, in the medulla oblongata. 
Muscular fiber contracts under the influence of an elec¬ 
tric shock from a galvanic battery, the same as when 
the muscle is charged with a nervous current from the 
brain, in obedience to the will, by which means we move 
our arms. The muscle of a frog’s leg, when charged 
with electricity, contracts in the same manner. 

Involuntary electric currents pulsate from the brain 
to the heart, causing its contraction, and the consequent 
circulation of the blood. All the movements of the re¬ 
spiratory, alimentary, and other parts, depend on electric 
pulsations ; the very rhythm of the breathing depends on 
the mechanical perfection of a certain region of the me- 
ckdla oblongata , as much as a watch depends upon the 
integrity of the escapement. 

The principles of the lever, the pulley, the wedge, 
the spring, electrics, hydraulics, hydrostatics, and calor¬ 
ics,— all play a part in the mechanism of the human 
economy. 

The eye, with its attendant nerve and brain fiber, is 
a sort of photographer’s studio, with varied apparatus for 
catching and holding lights and shades, and the surround¬ 
ing pictures of the external world ; here our lives are 
stored away in miniature ; and the panorama of our histo¬ 
ries preserved on invisible and immaterial plates. We 
look at them afresh in our dreams; reprint them in mem- 


186 


TI-IE MECHANICS OF LIFE. 


ory ; draw on them for our comparative, poetic, and im¬ 
aginative themes; changing and building new combina¬ 
tions. Perchance these plates are stored away in God’s 
eternity for man’s immortality. 

The ear, with its nerve and brain fiber, reaches back 
to a mysterious point in the brain. This unknown, invis¬ 
ible, and immaterial point, with its attendant drum and 
“ curling horn,” is a sort of telephone and phonograph, 
wherein is caught and held every wave of sound ; all the 
voices of nature are here locked for future reproduction ; 
in close response the organ of voice combines the mechan¬ 
ism of instrumental music; and the varied sounds of 
nature, locked in the brain, are here reproduced in human 
language, human poetry, and divine human music. 

Man is a sort of crystallization from the elements 
which surround him. He has derived his frame-work and 
chemical composition from atoms out of the external 
world, in obedience to the same laws which construct the 
snow-flake or round the rain drop. 

Man is a sort of vegetation ; he has derived his life, 
his nature, his character, from the soil, climate, and 
natural influences around him ; he has grown like a tree, 
stunned or ennobled,— the representation of sunshine 
and shadow, every branch and leaf draw T n to its place, 
every root influenced, bent with the winds, made beauti¬ 
ful or crushed, by the elements ; the product of environ¬ 
ments,— the result of circumstances,— the antitype of 
surrounding nature. 

Man is a sort of machine, the great machine of nat¬ 
ure, wherein, and upon which, all the elements play a 
part in propelling the wheels, pulleys, and mechanism of 
this wonderful economy — a wonderfully intricate ma¬ 
chine, the product of nature, and played upon by all the 


THE EYE AND EAR. 


187 


forces of nature through the medium of the eye, the ear, 
and the nerves of sensation. 

Here, in the human eye, the surrounding panorama 
of nature finds herself mirrored — gazes upon herself — 
looks into her own face. 

Here, in the human ear and human voice, nature’s 
own pulsations are re-echoed ; — she listens to the vibra¬ 
tions of her own sounds,— hears the echo of her own 
music. 

Here, in the human brain, the hills and stars, beauty 
and activity, the eternal thought of God, is repeated ; the 
Infinite reflects the finite, and the finite repeats the In¬ 
finite ; here, in the human brain, man becomes a great 
being, as high and deep, as wide and full, as pure and as 
vile, as the sweep of his thoughts. 

We have seen that man is the antitype of the uni¬ 
verse— of nature. He rests on the bosom, after His 
image, and in the likeness of God. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


INTRODUCTION TO GEOLOGY. 

“Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee.” 

The earth is a mighty book, containing a history of 
itself, every stratum of which is a chapter, every layer of 
rock an emblazoned page. 

The whole detailed history of our world is written in 
this book. Every time a Vesuvius has opened its crater 
and belched out fire and lava ; every time a Nile has 
broken from its bed and cut a new channel through a 
continent; every time a glacier has torn down a mount¬ 
ain ; wherever winds have played upon the sands, rain 
drops beaten, or waves washed ; wherever the worm has 
burrowed its home, and left its remains ; wherever life 
has lived and died ; wherever foot-prints have been made, 
— a record has been kept in rock, with fossils, preserved 
in sheets of stone, hardening from sand and clay. 

Every coral reef that built up continents in the early 
seas ; every type of fishes that came afterwards, and the 
reptiles which followed them ; every race of mammals 
that roamed the forests of cycles of ages ago ; every 
species of ape or man-like gorilla that inhabited the pre¬ 
historic earth ; every type of cave-dwelling, fur-covered 
men, with the marrow-sucked bones they left behind; 
every race which had learned the use of fire ; every tribe 
which made pottery and stone implements ; the people 
[ 188 ] 


WORLD-BOOK. 


189 


who came after them, and worked the soft metals ; the 
races who built mounds and pyramids ; up to the advent 
of human history, have all left a story in their skulls and 
skeletons, their foot-prints and implements, their pottery 
and religious symbols, their ruined villages and monu¬ 
ments, to tell us the story of their slow and tedious ad¬ 
vancement. 

Let us illustrate this world-book of geology, by sup¬ 
posing a million years to have elapsed from the present 
time. The earth will then have presented a new aspect; 
oceans will have encroached upon continents, and new 
continents emerged from the sea; yet, after all the un¬ 
avoidable changes, can it be supposed that the record of 
this age will have fallen into oblivion? Would not these 
now mighty and flourishing cities, then moldering in 
ruin and broken down in decay, like Thebes, Carthage, 
Troy, the monuments of Egypt, or the pyramids of South 
America, speak for themselves, and inform the world of 
their past glory and grandeur? Would not these iron 
rails spanning continents and broken locomotives buried 
on the plains ; these electric wires, netting up the globe, 
and their corroded batteries fished up out of the sea, 
inform future generations that the inhabitants of the 
nineteenth century knew how to make steam bear their 
burdens and the lightning convey their messages around 
the world ? 

But the most positive evidence that this was an age 
of enlightenment would be gleaned from the contour of 
the skulls and skeletons,— the massive foreheads and dig¬ 
nified bearing of the beings who reared these temples of 
science and halls of art, and decorated them with their 
presence, then petrified in ten thousand graves. What a 
contrast would be presented when compared with the 


190 


INTRODUCTION TO GEOLOGY. 


narrow, slanting foreheads of the mound-builders, or the 
yet more savage aspect of earlier races ! 

Such a history we have of the past. The work of 
ages may have fallen into ruins, but ruins remain,— 

“ They speak to the present and times to come.” 

Ages have come and gone, and cycles of ages changed 
and re-changed the whole aspect of our world, but ruins 
remain ; the whole history is preserved intact; bound with 
ribs of stone ; saved amid destruction ; unhurt by the 
play of elements, whirling winds, wearing waters, or con¬ 
suming fires. 

Let us open this great world-book of geology, and 
taking up layer after layer of the earth’s strata, read the 
record therein contained of the past history of the earth, 
of the origin of the species and of man. 





















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































■ 





, 








I 9b | 1 1 




























CHAPTER XIV. 

FIRST DAY 1 OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY —AGE OF FIRE AND FALL¬ 
ING GRANITE —DESCRIPTION WHICH APPLIES TO THE PRES¬ 
ENT ON THE PLANET NEPTUNE. 

“ He thundereth marvelously in the heavens, 

And the heights gave his voice hailstones, 

And coals of fire. He commanded the sun 
Not to shine, by the clouds which went between. 

At the brightness which was before him, 

His thick clouds passed hailstones and clouds of fire.” 

There was a time, far back in the eternities, when in 
this place of a solid earth, there existed a stupendous 
nebula of hot and fiery gases; hills and rocks were 
chaotic, phosphorescent clouds ; and the ocean wrapped 
around all, millions of miles of vapory tresses ; cooling 
and precipitating flakes of granite, which fell in steady 
showers from the vapory circumference towards the 
center. The more intense heat towards the center of the 

1 The word “ day ” is of course considered not as a literal day, but as 
symbolical of a long period of time—ages, during which God was fitting 
this earth as a home for man. The idea of exact days of twenty-four hours 
each is neither required by the original nor by the scope of the narration. 
The Christian fathers did not interpret it as a common day. Augustine, in 
the fourth century, called the days of creation “ineffable days,” and described 
them as “ alternate births and pauses in the work of the Almighty — the 
boundaries of periods in the vast evolution of the worlds.” How glorious 
the idea which we here obtain of God, as, through measureless ages in which 
he is rich, resting not, hasting not, but slowly and by the steady operation 

[ 193 J 


11 


104 FIRST DAY OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY. 

igneous vapory world again melted and sent back, by the 
law of expansion, to a point of balance, where now 
stands the granite, resting on ethereal fire. 

The process of cooling, which in the beginning 
hardened the liquid surface of the granite sea, like ice on 
the surface of water, is still as active as ever, and granite, 
even now, may be in process of formation in the under¬ 
lying deep strata of the globe, thereby thickening the 
earth’s crust by a process of steady cooling and harden¬ 
ing against the ebullitions of the underlying molten sea. 

The internal substances of the earth become ex¬ 
panded and vaporized by the increasing intensity of heat 
as we go downward, and the earth’s center is, perhaps, a 
hollow globe of tremendously heated gas ; since the ratio 
of increasing heat, observed with the ratio of depth in 
mines and deep artesian wells, would not only fuse the 
metals at the depth of fifty miles, but more centrally con¬ 
vert them into gas; herein is explained the deep-seated 
cause of earthquakes and volcanoes. 

In addition to the expansive properties of heat tend¬ 
ing to make the earth nearly a hollow globe, she has a 
rapid axial rotation, and its Herculean centrifugal force 
holds outward to the plane of the earth’s surface internal 
substance ; this cause alone will make a rapidly rotating 


of his own laws, he works out to the finest detail his mighty thought of the 
world. Moses gives but the grand outline of this creative act, an outline 
which geology is filling up rapidly and surely. The Mosaic account is a 
hymn, full of poetry and grandeur, not a close, exact, scientific record of 
events. Yet its truths were inspired by the same God who made the world. 
As such we receive the records of both revelation and nature, and gladly no¬ 
tice their harmony in all their grand teachings. As yet geology is in its in¬ 
fancy, and we are often able only to suggest and intimate what may hereafter 
be, firmly believing that God’s truth must stand, whether it be revealed in 
the rock or in the book.— SlceJe. 


AGE OF FIRE AND FALLING GRANITE. 195 

body a hollow globe, the internal dimensions of which 
will be proportioned to the rapidity of axial rotation. 

The first proper geologic day was the age in which 
the cooling gases of a chaotic earth precipitated its atmos¬ 
pheric rock, like falling meteors or hail, and built up the 
deep miles of granite which form the foundation of the 
earth's crust, resting on a molten flood. 

‘‘For He founded the earth upon seas, 

And stretched it upon floods.” 

The great center of the earth yet remains a gaseous 
and igneous ocean. The earth is one stupendous caldron 
of fire incrusted with a thin shell ; volcanoes are passage¬ 
ways or vents to the deep-seated fiery sea. 

The volume of lava expelled in a single night from a 
bursting volcano, often exceeds the bulk of the entire 
mountain. 

Volcanic mountains are stretched in lines or long 
chains on the sites of old fissures — seams in the crust of 
this globe reaching down to central fire. 

The Rocky Mountain chain extends from pole to 
pole; in the north lifting ice heads from white crystal 
seas ; magnificent peaks, locked hand in hand, stretch 
away in lines of beauty spanning the western shore of the 
two American continents, with extinct or active volcanic 
craters to the mighty fires that still illume the South 
Antarctic seas ; here is a great fissure, a break, in the 
crust of this globe, extending down to its heart's core, 
where the hot pulse of the world's passion is still felt in 
giant throbs. 

The four great Mexican volcanoes, Jorullo, Colima, 
Orizaba, and Popocatepetl, are on the same fissure line. 
Jorullo, when it broke forth in 1759, came directly in line 


196 first day of the world's history. 

with the other three. On the same night that Orizaba 
was in action, three thousand miles to the south, on the 
same fissure, Aconcagua was belching forth its fires; 
while Etna and Vesuvius on the Alpine fissure burst 
forth, accompanied by an earthquake, felt over an area 
of more than two thousand miles. 

Such phenomena prove the cause of volcanic action 
to be deep seated. 1 An earthquake felt at Sydney trav¬ 
ersed the Atlantic, and was perceptible on all the great 
lakes of America, covering an area one eighth of the 
entire globe ; phenomena of such magnitude point to 
mighty and magnificent causes. 

We stand on a thin crust, sustained by a fiery flood,— 
a thin and yielding crust, which .bends in lightning waves 
with earthquake shocks, sinks and swells in sympathy 
with the stars, pulsating like a mighty human heart, under 
the energy of which come volcanoes and earthquakes. 
Lo, all beneath is fire — a bubbling, hissing hell, caged 
and chained with the thin crust upon which we tread ! 2 

Reader, go back with me again into the first dawning 
day of the world’s history ; imagine the fiery conflicting 

1 On the morning of May 9, 1876, the earth’s crust at Peru gave a few 
great throbs upward. The sea fled and returned in great waves as the land 
rose and fell, and in less than five hours giant waves had covered a space 
equal to South America ; they ran out to the Sandwich Islands, six thousand 
miles distant, at the rate of five hundred miles an hour. 

2 Mount Yzalco, in the little republic of San Salvadore, arose suddenly 
from the plain in the spring of 1770 in the midst of what had been, for nearly 
one hundred years, the profitable estate of Senor Don Erazo. 

In December, 1769, the peons were alarmed by terrific rumblings, con¬ 
stant tremblings of the earth, and frequent earthquakes, and on February 23, 
1770, the grand upheaval took place. First there was a series of terrible 
explosions, which lifted the crust of the earth several hundred feet, and out 
of the cracks issued flames and lava, and immense volumes of smoke. 
Iiocks weighing thousands of tons were hurled into the air, and fell several 


Oi j ex Molten Crater in the Sandwich Islands. “ We Stand On a Thin Crust Sustained By a Fiery Flood.’ 


































































































































































































































































































































































































































































AGE OF FIRE ANI) FALLING GRANITE. 


199 


scenes of the early time; let us add fuel to the earth’s 
present fires, pour combustibles of terrific force into its 
very center, convert the oceans into naptha, the rocks 
into giant-powder, and sink mountains of nitro-glycerine 
deep into the fiery bowels of this earth. Then get thee 
back to some safe place in God’s immensity, pray to him 
for succor amid the sylvan shades of some far-away 
planet, be satisfied with standing-room on the scaffolding 
of Saturn's outer ring, and there, wrapped in solitude, 
wait patiently the slow evolving process of God’s infinite 
plan; behold the earth as she once was, a blazing, burn¬ 
ing, fiery nebula, streaked with shades of purple and 
crimson, garnished with silver and covered with cloth of 
gold. Be patient in thy solitude; for a million slow roll¬ 
ing ages must elapse before e’en a crust of red-hot liquid 
granite shall have formed for thee an embryotic core of 
the future earth. 

Be patient in thy solitude, for thou art back in the 
eternities, amid the magnificence of God’s temple ; lose 
thyself in the awful grandeur and magnitude of his 
handiwork. 

Behold in the place of the earth a fiery mass sur¬ 
rounded with vapors, one hundred and eighty thousand 
miles in diameter, rotating majestically on its axis even 

leagues distant. The surface of the earth was elevated about three thou¬ 
sand feet. 

These discharges continued, accompanied by loud explosions and earth¬ 
quakes, which did much damage throughout the entire republic. In less 
than two months, from a level field rose a mountain more than four thousand 
feet high, and the constant discharges from the crater have accumulated 
around its edges until its elevation has increased two thousand feet more. 
The cone of lava and ashes is now two thousand five hundred feet from the 
foundation of the earth upon which it rests, and is constantly growing by 
the incessant discharge of volcanic matter. 


200 


FIRST DAY OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY. 

more rapidly then than now ; behold the external vapors 
caught up by centrifugal force, and in great folds held 
outward twenty thousand miles, forming stupendous exter¬ 
nal rings ; behold them, as the central mass cools, break¬ 
ing into detached parts, and falling in a mighty display of 
varied colored lights, in meteoric storms upon the earth ; 
or uniting with the earth’s companion comet in a solid 
body, as it slowly yields up its moisture to the sun, and 
leaves only the cold, barren rock of a desolate moon, 
entombing the record of its ancient glory in feeble, re¬ 
flected light. 

Behold centrifugal force in the depths of the revolv¬ 
ing, fiery world, struggling with gravitation, and anon 
becoming its master; while from the center the molten 
fire plunges outward, instead of inward, forming the 
stupendous hollow deeps of Milton’s resounding hell. 

Mark the change wrought in the first day and subse¬ 
quent periods of the earth’s history; the sublimity and 
magnitude of which mortals sometimes see in the im¬ 
measurable distance, when anon, a comet with blazing 
front and retort of surging, boiling elements, dragging 
behind a train of fire and debris two hundred thousand 
miles in length, stations itself, like a “flaming sword,” 
in the northern sky: or, anon, when we look through the 
telescope at the planet Neptune, whose condensing vapors 
have draped the silver and gold, and robed a central 
blazing sea of fire, whose central heart holds outward red 
waves of rolling, molten rock ; wrapped in smoke and 
vapors,— in a painted shield of black and grey,— in 
cloud-belt blankets thirty thousand miles in depth. 

A million colored lights dance in the wide expanse of 
the world abyss, shaded with fogs and drapery of vapors, 


AGE OF FIRE AND FALLING GRANITE. 


201 


reflecting shields of silver and castles of gold beneath a 
black ebony sky of surrounding vapors. 

See meteoric storms, with showers of crystal granite 
falling like an infinity of fire-flies from the black back¬ 
ground of the illuminated heavens. See mighty tides, 
tornadoes, and revolving columns plunging onward in the 
atmosphere of fire, while the heights pour down hail from 
the astonished sky ; behold heaven on fire, pouring out 
ashes to form a boiling sea of surging, wave-dashed rock ; 
behold the heaving bosom of that liquid sea as the trem¬ 
bling shoulder of underlying heat yields to the unequal 
weight, and floods of molten rock plunge into the hotter 
depths of hell ; where fused into vapors, it rises again, in 
loud bellowing bubbles, on the surface of the boiling pot. 

The first day of the earth’s history rolled into eter¬ 
nity, and the ending saw a molten flood of granite, heav¬ 
ing its breast in stately tides, and dashing red waves 
with white, hardening billows, o’er all the landscape; 
while high above, a mask of dark clouds with silver 
linings filled the firmament, enveloping the world in a 
painted fold ; shutting out the stars, and holding its 
mighty mantle against the sun. 

Header, look again at the planet Neptune ; and you 
behold a bulky planet, composed mainly of dark carbon 
clouds, and fog-banks of moisture, enveloping a central 
molten core in gossamer folds thirty thousand miles in 
depth. She is now in the first day and age of her his¬ 
tory ; repeating the history of the first day and age of the 
world. God covered the light with darkness, dividing 
from it the light of the sun. 


“And the evening and the morning were the first day." 


CHAPTER XV. 


SECOND DAY OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY — AGE OF FALLING OCEANS 

— FORMATION OF GNEISS — DESCRIPTION APPLICABLE TO THE 

PRESENT STATE OF THE PLANET URANUS. 

“ And God said, Let there be a firmament 
In the midst of the waters, and 
Let it divide the waters from the waters.” 

The process of continued cooling and condensation 
went on through infinite ages; and the watery vapors of a 
high upper firmament were slowly yet surely “bowing 
the heavens and coming down,'’ and gathering in gossa¬ 
mer clouds on the face of the liquid sea of granite; its 
surface hardened into rock, like the formation of ice on 
the surface of water; and clouds began to precipitate 
moisture, and pour down flooding waters. 

“Channels of water were seen, and 
The foundations of the earth discovered.*' 

Then commenced a series of actions and reactions, 
which for terrific grandeur and awful sublimity, were 
never equaled at any prior or subsequent period of the 
world’s history. Hydrogen found its equivalent of oxy¬ 
gen, and vapors wrapped the world in a majestic fold; 
while steadily increasing torrents fell from the black sky. 

Water, falling from the atmosphere, ran down into 
crevices of the rocks, and coming in contact with intense 
heat, became again converted into steam, breaking the 
[ 202 ] 


AGE OF FALLING OCEANS. 


203 


rocks into fragments, and scattering debris in all direc¬ 
tions, while the atmosphere gave back its waters in one 
continued shower. 

Around the jagged heads of recently upheaved rock, 
clouds gathered and poured their floods down the ragged 
sides ; and sediment thus formed was spread over the 
floor of boiling seas. 

The metals were suspended in the watery solution ; 
and under the play of electric currents, they acted and 
reacted on each other, until mineral beds and crystalline 
veins were formed. 

Nature was at work in the great crucible, as if by 
design preparing for the needs of future ages; seams of 
gold and veins of silver were hid away in the rocks ; 
while the debris of crumbling, wave-washed granite, 
charged with new chemical substances, hardened into 
gneiss and slate. 

At this period, the earth presented a scene awful in 
sublimity. It was the war of confusion and chaos ; land 
and sea, water and fire, were strangely intermingled ; 
and masses of rock, red with heat, shot up from infernal 
depths. The breaking billows and wild* watery landscape, 
contrasted with the lurid glare of fire, flashing forth phos¬ 
phorescent flames from wide-moutlied volcanic craters, 
illuminating the heavens like northern lights, or hanging 
like mighty comets far off with their fiery heads in the sea. 

The artillery of earth and sky volleyed forth majestic 
tones; the heavy gutteral rumbling of earthquakes, min¬ 
gled with the lightning’s shrill cry, while water struggling 
in the arms of fire sent forth moans and groans; and a 
pandemonium of conflicting voices echoed up from the 
depths of hell. All creation was at war in these her 
morning ages. 


204 


SECOND DAY OF THE WORLD S HISTORY. 

But tiie plan of to-day in all its serene and wonderful 
detail, was written in tlie early turmoil; the chaos and 
commotions were the throes and spasms of a majestic 
birth, the birth of every possibility since enacted in the 
history of the world. 

Nor was the struggle, the turmoil, the battle, of 
short duration; for ages the conflicting elements of fire 
and water labored onward in throes of volcanic fury, 
heaving, distorting, and breaking into fragments the 
thickening crust, while earthquakes and volcanoes belched 
out fire and rock from innumerable vents and openings. 

“ He shot up his arrows, and scattered them ; 

He sent his lightnings unto the ends of the earth.” 

Gneiss overlies the granite, and differs from it only 
in being stratified. Indeed, it is often difficult to dis¬ 
tinguish the two kinds of rock, so insensibly do they pass 
into each other. Gneiss is therefore the product of gran¬ 
ite, crumbled by the action of hot water, like slacking 
lime amid boiling seas. The slates were a still later 
primitive formation, made up of the debris of granite and 
gneiss, charged with carbon and new and various chem¬ 
ical substances. The early oceans were seething caldrons 
of boiling water, since gneiss and slate are the products 
of an incomplete metamorphic action by heat. 1 

1 Iu the account given of the Pluton geysers, California, we seem to 
have an insight into the laboratory of the world, and can learn something of 
the chemical changes which have been going on in past ages. These geysers 
are hot springs, which throw out intermittingly and spasmodically powerful 
jets of steam and scalding water. The water contaius sulphuric acid, sulphu- 
reted hydrogen, and probably other active solvents. The rocks are rapidly 
dissolving under this powerful metamorphic action. Porphyry and jasper are 
transformed into a kind of potter’s clay. Trap and magnesian rocks are con¬ 
sumed much like wood in a slow fire, forming sulphate of magnesia and 


AGE OF FALLING OCEANS. 


205 


Gigantic geysers sent up volumes of boiling water 
and dark clouds. 


“ With heaven’s artillery fraught, 

Rolled on o’er the Caspian,” 

while wheeling cyclones caught up old ocean’s watery 
tresses, and moved in stately water-spout columns on the 
flood, and chained the waters which were under the fir¬ 
mament to the waters which were above the firmament. 

The second day was the long ages of the struggle 
between fire and water, in which water at last triumphed ; 
and old ocean dashed her tidal waves against barren 
mountains of crumbling granite. 

Reader, look through the telescope at the planet 
Uranus, now in the second day and age of planets, and 
you behold the earth as she was in the age of forming 
moisture and falling oceans. 

“ God made the firmament, and divided 
The waters which were under the firmament 
From the waters which were above the firmament. 

And the evening and the morning were the second day.” 

other products. Granite is rendered so soft that one can crush it between liis 
fingers as easily as unbaked bread. The feldspar is converted partly into 
alum. The boulders and angular fragments brought down the ravine by 
floods are being converted into a firm conglomerate, so that it is difficult to 
dislodge even a small pebble, the pebble itself sometimes breaking before the 
cement will yield. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


THIRD DAY OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY —AGE OF DAWNING LIFE- 

CREATION OF MARBLE —SCENES NOW BEING REPEATED ON 

THE PLANET SATURN. 

“ The earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding 
Seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit.” 

The conflicting elements of water and heat labored 
onward in mighty throes and convulsions, thickening the 
earth’s crust at every rent and seam, in every distortion 
and upheaval; and barren wastes of rock lifted their 
cloud-capped heads high into the sky, while continents 
heaved their breasts amid the billows, and slowly pre¬ 
scribed the limit of receding tides. 

“ God said, Let the waters under the heavens 
Be gathered together unto one place, 

And let dry land appear ; and God 
Called the dry land earth, and the 
Gathering together of waters, called he seas.” 

Gneiss is generally buried beneath vast accumula¬ 
tions of marble and other later formations, by heat and 
the influx of hot water, charged with various chemical 
substances, and crystallized into various substratified 
rock ; and the evidence of the simple germs of life which 
first inhabited the globe obliterated. 

Marble, however, is found in every stage of meta¬ 
morphosis, from the lower, complete crystalline, the mid- 
[ 206 ] 


-AGE OF DAWNING LIFE. 


207 


die, partially fossilized, and the upper limestone, com¬ 
posed exclusively of the remains of a former life. 

In the record of this third day, we read that God 
commanded the elements to produce life. His addresses 
were directed to earth, air, and water: — 

“Let the earth,” “Let the air,” “Let the water,” 

“ Bring forth the living creature ; ” 


and it came,—the spontaneous product of the elements, 
beaming like motes in the rays of light, the simple union 
of chemical atoms ; in the warm, damp, and mineral- 
charged atmosphere, where chemical activities were min¬ 
gling ; and showers of infusoria fell into the sea, and were 
metamorphosed by it; clouds of animalcula and shoals 
of insectivora, struggled upward, through crossings and 
amalgamations, from simple chemical atoms to visible, 
active germs of living things, and left the debris of their 
dead forms, food for devouring elements. 

Ages passed by, and life went on multiplying, chang¬ 
ing, crossing, climbing upward to higher forms, until it 
left fossil evidences of its existence imbedded in rock,— 
a hieroglyphic story on tables of stone of the earth’s 
mighty past. 

The first evidence of fossil life, and therefore the 
earliest geologic record of the simple living things which 
inhabited the globe, is probably contained in serpentine 
marble. 

Before me is such a piece of rock, once the soft sub¬ 
stance of a sea-beach, studded with the charred and par¬ 
tially destroyed forms of the simple germs that swarmed 
the waters of the early seas, and left their remains 
stranded here by receding tides. 


208 THIRD DAY OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. 

If the limestone layers of this piece of stone be re¬ 
moved by an acid, the granules in the residue resemble 
the casts of rhizopods ; the relics of the beings that as far 
as geologic evidence can go. were the first living things 
to inhabit this globe. 

The evidences of marble, however, step by step up¬ 
ward in the order of the formation of its layers, become 
at last conclusive and clear, filling the crevices with beau¬ 
tifully colored figures, as seen in variegated marbles ; 
higher still we discover perfect outlines of shells in ex¬ 
tensive beds, since converted into solid marble; and 
slabs of varied colored marble admitting of the highest 
polish, and showing the clear outlines of the million skele¬ 
tons of the living beings, the debris of whose dead forms 
compose it, may be seen almost everywhere as decora¬ 
tions for furniture, and ornamentation in sculptured stone 
buildings. 

The third day was long beyond description, in which 
vast beds of marble and other limestone were formed, 
of wide extent and thickness ; by the wear and wash of 
waves, by the growth, death, and decay of living things. 

The thin crust of the globe palpitated in mighty 
throes and convulsions, and the protoplasm of life mixed 
its dead substance through all the wave-washed debris of 
marble rock. Lime forms a prominent constituent of 
shells, bones, corals, etc. Animals secrete lime from the 
water in which they live, or from the food they eat; when 
they die, their mineral remains accumulate in great quan¬ 
tities, and gradually harden into rock. Chalk was formed 
by the consolidation of minute shells smaller than a grain 
of sand. As each particle is cellular, and not solid, chalk 
has a soft, porous structure, and the microscope reveals 
the tiny shells. Even marble and other limestone, con- 


AGE OF DAWNING LIFE. 


200 


taining no trace of fossils, was made by the sea breaking 
and grinding shells and corals into powder, just as it 
grinds rock and pebbles into sand. We see this process 
now going on in the formation of coral reefs. From the 
vast extent of limestone on the earth, we form an estimate 
of the amount of animal life which existed in past ages. 

Marble is crystallized limestone, and is one of the 
rocks in which metamorpliic action by heat can easily be 
traced. When not thus modified, we find it as common 
limestone, chalk, etc. By heat it takes on a crystalline 
structure, its color is changed, the fossils are generally 
destroyed, and the various impurities form new minerals 
which often fill the veins of the marble with beautiful 
colored figures, as seen in variegated marbles. 

The evening of the third day rolled into eternity, 
and a morning came, called by geologists the Salurian 
era, in which sandstone, shale, and various limestones 
were formed; the product of crumbling wave-washed 
rock, mixed with the dead debris of fossil shells, and 
low forms of vegetation. 

No highly organized animal life yet existed ; there 
were no wild cry of birds, no dashing of monsters in the 
ocean foam, no terrible beasts of prey waking the echoes 
with hoarse roar, no landscape forests of maple and pine 
on the crests of ragged mountains. 

Earthquakes still rocked the yielding crust of the 
globe to and fro, and from fissures belched out floods 
of lava, forcing before it the mighty sea, whose waters 
leaped, in thundering explosions, into hissing vapors ; 
and volcanoes belched out fire and rock in wild disorder. 

The sun struggled in vain to penetrate the dense 
atmosphere of a yet heated, primitive world : the air, 
damp with fogs and foul with gases, stalked o’er land 


210 


THIRD DAY OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY. 


and sea: a kk leaden pall” hung its dark garment in the 
heavens : there was no rainbow of radiant colors, reflect¬ 
ing the soft shadings of sunlight: there was no ethereal 
blue of mid-day ; no starry canopy, with lesser and greater 
lights ; no evenings decked with the Milky Way of shin¬ 
ing stars. 

Mosses, grasses, and “ herb yielding seed in short, 
the coral life of the sea nowhere rises above the vege¬ 
tative plan of life ; and we shall show in a future chapter, 
on u Embryology, ” that all types of life begin existence 
as vegetation by the simple union of cells. 1 

Graptolites covered the muddy bottom of the sea 
w r ith their quaint, mossy forms, waving their branches 
and scattering offspring in the flowing tide. Coral reefs 
stretch away, in lines of beauty, where u myriad workers 
toil to build up their fragile, many-colored homes.” 

Every wave strews the sands with shells and broken 
corals. Trilobites skull their tiny boats, and with shoals 
artholites are buried in rolling sands. 

Mollusks luxuriate in endless profusion, and leave 
the debris of their shells, mixed with the ground clay of 
their dead companions, in reefs of chalk, clay, limestone, 
shale, and sandstone; which, though hundreds of feet in 
depth, has passed through the laboratory of life. 

1 “ Nature has all her facts stereotyped. She writes her events often 
upon the most fragile plants and flowers, on the very winds and waters — all 
the most evanescent and changing forms, as well as the most permanent. 
Her record is as enduring as the phases of the object upon which she writes, 
and sometimes, as if fearing both would be lost, she petrifies the whole, and 
leaves it thus to endure for the ages. She has iten preserved in stone the 
history of her frailest leaves, her most ephemeral and minutest insects and 
infusoria, the record of her ebbing and flowing tides, of the piles of dust 
blown together by her winds, the footprints of her smallest birds, and of her 
rain drops falling upon the sand.” — Blackwell . 


AGE OF DAWNING LIFE. 


211 


Life during this long era was low and simple : but 
progressive evolution is marked from the beginning to the 
ending; and fishes of a simple type are finally ushered 
in: cephalopods, or miniature lobsters, possessing the 
rudiments of skeleton and nerve centers, with mouth 
and extensible tongues, prophesied, in dim shadows, the 
types to come. 

The vegetation of the landscape was low and simple, 
consisting of mosses, sponges, brakes, and other forms, 
rapid in decay, the fossil evidence of which is therefore 
obscure ; but the plan of the shell life of the seas has not 
as yet risen above the vegetable form of a simple multiple 
of cells. 

The great drama of life and death has commenced, 
of progressive evolutions, which is to play while the earth 
endures. 

The geologic evidence of polar changes of the earth, 
terminating the two former days, is obscure, but astron¬ 
omy and philosophy unite in giving to the earth a new 
orbit around the sun, and a new axis of motion, beginning 
and terminating each of the two preceding days. 

Closing the third day, the evidence of a change of 
the earth’s orbit and axis becomes apparent: forming 
thereby a new equatorial belt, and unbalancing the equi¬ 
librium of internal fire, bulging the oceans at a new 
equator. 

These causes broke up and distorted the whole crust 
of the globe ; mountain chains sunk forever into the 
bowels of the earth’s molten sea ; and new continents, 
with new mountains, were upheaved. 

The scenes of life are shifted to new sections, with a 
new map of continents and oceans. 


12 


212 THIRD DAY OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY. 

Life must conform to conditions, or become extinct; 
and it will be the natural sequence in to-morrow’s new 
surroundings for life to be molded into types new and 
strange ; for — 

“He treadetli upon the waves of the sea, 

And overturneth the earth; 

He shaketh the heavens, 

And the earth hath removed out of her place.” 

Reader, look through the telescope at the planet 
Saturn, and you will behold centrifugal force forming 
of the superabundant envelope gigantic external rings ; 
while beneath the blanket of clouds thirty thousand 
miles in depth, in the warm waters of her seas, amid the 
crumbling continents of recently upheaved rock, now 
exist all the types of life and low forms of vegetation 
described in this chapter. 


“And the evening and the morning were the third day.” 


CHAPTER XVII. 


FOURTH DAY OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY —AGE OF COMING BLUE 

AND BLAZING SUN—COAL FORESTS AND REIGN OF FISHES — 

A DESCRIPTION WHICH APPLIES TO THE PRESENT OF THE 

PLANET JUPITER. 

“And God made two great lights, 

* The greater light to rule the day, 

The lesser light to rule the night. 

He made the stars also.” 

The mighty operations of nature may work on in 
ruin and desolation, but her grandest achievements are 
accomplished by slow labor through decades of centu¬ 
ries ; step by step accomplishing plans, slowly but surely 
producing gigantic results. Century by century a steady 
advance takes place which cannot, in its fullness, be 
recognized save by comparing widely separated ages. 

The fourth day covered countless centuries, like the 
preceding, in which types of life were struggling upward 
to higher forms. 

From morning till mid-day, mosses and brakes were 
progressing and evolving, slowly but surely, to the grand¬ 
est forests that ever clothed the earth ; and through 
long ages of wonderful, magic growth, slowly yet surely 
devouring the poisonous black carbon of the earth’s 
clouded atmosphere, and preparing earth and air for the 
abode of life. 

The great, grand accomplishment of this age stands 
out so glorious and overwhelming, that the geologist 

[213 j 


214 


FOURTH DAY OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY. 


himself is wrapped in wonder; and for the time being 
forgets his trail of progressing mollusks and advancing 
vegetation,— the means and methods of nature’s great 
results; all of this is for the time being forgotten as he 
takes in the majestic completion of the accomplishment, 
and beholds for the first time the blue of an ethereal 
sky, radiant with flashing lights, moving orbs, and spark¬ 
ling stars ; in the pointed language of Genesis this was 
the age when — 

“ God said, Let there be lights in the 
Firmament of the heaven to divide the day 
From the night, and let them be for signs 
And for seasons and for days and for years.” 

Having thus summed up the accomplished results of 
this age, let us go back from the ending to the beginning, 
and read the record in beds of coal and other tables of 
stone, of the natural progressive methods by which these 
great results were accomplished. 

I will not burden the reader with a laborious disser¬ 
tation on the old red sandstone formations of Scotland, 
France, Connecticut, and elsewhere, rich with the fossil 
rock of progressive fishes, of multitudinous species, and 
mixed with shells and corals, trilobites, and all the types 
of former life, in endless gradations, from low to high, 
up to ganoids, sharks, etc. ; but refer those who wish to 
make a clearer study of these formations to Hugh Miller, 
Dana, Lyell, Hitchcock, and others. 

On the landscape, rapid progress in the evolution 
of vegetable forms is observed ; club-moss has climbed 
upward to brakes ; mushroom puff-balls have become 
mighty ferns. The cryptogama of the Devonian era 
has now become the lepidodendrons of mighty carbonif¬ 
erous forests. 


AGE OF COMING BLUE AND BLAZING SUN. 


215 


Vegetation progressed on the landscape from age to 
age, and in the noon of full day, the grandest forests 
that ever clothed this earth shut up their green verdure, 
devouring the carbon of dark poisonous air, and waved 
their mighty foliage o’er all the landscape. Strange 
vegetable forms sprung up, as if by magic, and every¬ 
where on land flourished a wonderful, tropical growth. 

The successive strata of carboniferous land and De¬ 
vonian sea are found overlapping each other, as in suc¬ 
ceeding ages continents are upheaved, and the sea recedes 
or, anon, pours swelling in again; leaving successive 
deposits in layers, one upon the other, rich with the 
history of land and sea, since hardened into beds of coal 
and sand-rock, containing the fossil remains of the fishes 
which inhabited the seas. 

In the oceans of this age fishes, in endless profusion, 
luxuriate and reign. 

Nowhere in the rocky book of nature do we read a 
page free from death, and here, as elsewhere, is enacted 
the struggle for existence ; the strong prey upon and 
devour the weak ; corals are still at work building up 
reefs ; trilobites, lobsters, and shell-fishes congregate on 
the shallow shore, with swimming, finny denizens ; pur¬ 
sued and overtaken, they furnish food for the more 
rapacious monsters of the deep. To the strata of rock 
containing the fossil remains of these early inhabitants 
of the sea, geologists have given the name 4 4 Devonian 
era.” 

The luxuriance of the forests which covered the 
carboniferous landscape, will be in part appreciated when 
it is considered that a century’s growth of present forests 
would be required to produce a stratum of coal two inches 
in thickness. 


216 


FOURTH DAY OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY. 


The total depth of the English coal-beds, underlying 
each other, and separated by Devonian sandstone, is 
one hundred and fifty feet in thickness, and it cannot 
be less in America. 

Long ages of growth and decay rolled into eternity, 
and the broken-down debris of these mighty forests 
formed immense beds of peat and vegetable matter, 
increasing in depth age by age, as carboniferous matter 
accumulated. 

And it is more than probable that the excessive 
abundance of carbon in the atmosphere was being depos¬ 
ited with the accumulating vegetable substances in 
crystal layers, and forming crystal stalactites of carbon, 
closely allied to later vegetation ; in short, the growth 
of carboniferous vegetation was almost a crystallization. 

When we consider the awful depths of the early 
carboniferous atmosphere, with its damp and murky 
condition, it is reasonable to suppose that vegetable 
fungus fell in showers, adding its substance to the ac¬ 
cumulating coal measures. 

Convulsions of nature sometimes upheaved continents 
from the ocean, and continents with their accumulated 
vegetable beds sunk beneath the sea, and the wash of 
waves and drift-rock, with sand and fossil fish, overrun 
and deep buried the sites of former forests, to be again 
upheaved and covered with new forests as luxuriant as 
before. In the course of ages this process must have 
been frequently repeated ; for in sections of the coal 
fields there are several distinct strata of coal, one above 
the other, and separated by layers of sandstone. 

Lyell found in a coal field in Nova Scotia, in a sec¬ 
tion one hundred and fifty feet in thickness, sixty-eight 
levels or distinct incline planes, the floors of former for- 


AGE OF COMING BLUE AND BLAZING SUN. 217 

ests, one upon the other, and separated by thin layers of 
sandstone; where the trunks of trees were found intact, 
still flourishing with roots, since changed into coal. 

The intervening rocks formed by the w r ear and wash 
of the ocean, are sandstone, shale, yellow and gray lime¬ 
stone, — immense beds of wide extent and thickness, and 
filled more or less with the fossil remains of fishes, shells, 
and corals. 

During the carboniferous age, no land animals ap¬ 
pear, no birds fill the air with music. The hum of insects 
and the croaking of amphibia alone wake the echoes of 
the dismal forests. 

Fishes are modified by new conditions. New species 
are constantly ushered in, while former species become 
extinct, the only evidence of their existence being their 
fossil forms imbedded in rock As Denton remarks in his 
“Past of Our Planet,” “ The stars sink one by one in the 
west, and new stars appear in the east, so, through the 
night of the past, sunk all forms of life, to be succeeded 
by the new approach, nearer the dawn of the day in 
which we live.” 

The thick clouds of black poisonous carbon, furnish¬ 
ing a vehicle for the still more dense clouds of moisture, 
which until now had created one continuous night of im¬ 
penetrable darkness, through which no ray of sunlight had 
penetrated, is now stored away in immense beds of coal, 
and the radiant light of heaven’s shining orbs comes 
steaming down. In the meantime, the earth reached the 
intensity of her ellipse, again assumed a new axis of 
motion and a new orbit nearer the sun, breaking up the 
entire crust of the globe. 

Reader, look through the telescope at the planet 
Jupiter, and you behold the belts of fast fading, primitive 


218 


FOURTH DAY OF THE WORLD A HISTORY. 


nebula, intermingled with the forming pure oxygenized 
air. Beneath the depths of her cloudy atmosphere, the 
planet is clothed in a luxuriant, prodigious vegetation, 
while fishes in endless types swarm in the waters of 
her seas. 

The rays of sunlight, of moon and stars, are begin¬ 
ning to penetrate the depths of air, and flash light and 
brilliancy over the strange landscape, and cast shadows 
and changing phenomena — 

“ For signs and for seasons and for days and for years. 

And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.” 





















































[220] Age of Reptiles — Fifth Day of the World’s History, at tiie Present Time Repeated on the Asteroids. 





















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































CHAPTER XVIII. 


FIFTH DAY OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY—AGE OF CHAOTIC LIFE — 
THE REPTILIAN ERA —A DESCRIPTION WHICH APPLIES TO THE 
PRESENT ON THE ASTEROIDS. 

“And God said. Let the waters bring 
Forth abundantly the moving creature 
That hath life, and fowl that may fly 
Above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.” 

The great, startling record of the rocks, beginning 
the fifth day, is the wide-spread upheavals and distortions 
which changed the position of former strata, setting the 
coal measures on end, or forming incline planes, at the 
surface of which the coal fields still crop out; while in 
other portions of the earth’s surface, they are buried 
deep with volcanic exudations, and later rock formations. 

Great depressions and correspondingly vast upheavals 
changed the relative position of sea and land. Vast 
mountain chains broke through the level surface of 
former plains, and lifted their granite heads high into the 
sky, leaving the coal measures on either side in inclined 
layers, or buried deep with volcanic matter. 

The whole rocky frame-work of the globe was broken 
up by the most stupendous convulsions the earth has seen. 
The coal measures were formed on the fourth day, and 
had it not been for that night of God’s ruin, when he over¬ 
turned the earth, and broke its shell like a crumbling 
wafer, which event divides the fourth and fifth days, one 
hundred and fifty feet of coal, or rather four hundred feet 

[ 221J 


222 FIFTH DAY OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY. 

of peat, would be presented to us, equally distributed over 
the surface of the earth. 

But the hand of design, working in eternal causation, 
broke in pieces the shell of this earth, burying these beds 
of peat, with outpouring molten rock ; mixing in places 
carbon with molten lava, producing iron ore ; in other 
localities, compressing and crystallizing peat into coal; 
driving before it the residue of petroleum. And to-day 
man has fuel for his hearths, iron for his utensils and 
machinery, rock for his buildings, mineral for his inven¬ 
tions, and light for the shadows of his pathway. 

Had we no other evidence of a sudden polar change 
and the formation of a new equatorial belt, new antipodes 
of contracting poles, disturbing the balance of internal 
fire, and wrecking the shell of a former earth, these rocky 
evidences would alone be sufficient to establish it; but we 
have shown by overwhelming astronomical evidence, that 
the earth has regular periods of sudden polar changes ; 
that the increasing eccentricity of the earth’s orbit compel 
the establishment of a new axis, in approximate periods 
of six hundred thousand years. In the language of 
Job,— 

“When he overturneth the earth. 

Which commandeth the sun and it 
Riseth not, and sealeth up the stars ; ”— 

such was the ending of the fourth day, and such was the 
beginning of the fifth day. 

The atmosphere, freed from the overhanging black 
drapery of poisonous carbon, it having been devoured by 
the forests of the preceding age, is now stored away in 
mighty coal measures. 

Considering, therefore, the changes in earth, air, and 
sea ; the mighty deluge which has swept over forests of 



Fossil Bones of Plesiosaurus and Pterodactyl, Extinct Monsters 
Which Inhabited the Earth in Its Fifth Day. 


[ 223 ] 










. 



■ 


. 

. 






• • . 






























AGE OF ABUNDANT LIFE. 


225 


waving foliage ; and continents of polar ice, now melting 
in the glare of a torrid sun ; and a new-born sunlight, 
streaming in brilliancy over all the landscape, have we 
not a right to expect great changes, metamorphoses, and 
unfoldings in all the former types of life ? 

We read a prophecy in the progressive evolutions of 
the fishes of the third day, and saw its fulfillment in the 
fourth, in an age of the reign of fishes. In the fourth 
day we had noticed the development of enormous fins, 
prophesying wings, and a few species of fishes becoming 
batrachia had prophesied air-breathing animals ; now be¬ 
hold in the fifth day the fulfillment of prophecy. 

Conform to conditions or become extinct ; grow in a 
new soil or die ; change with new environments ; leap 
into a new life, under the fiat of nature ; be metamor¬ 
phosed by sunlight and air, or take your tomb in fossil 
rock ! 

Behold after long trains of progressive evolutions, 
during which time the turmoil of elements has become 
settled into the calm stillness of God’s fifth day ; behold 
a type of life new and strange,— an innumerable caravan 
of fowls ; flying, creeping, crawling, swimming. It is 
the age of reptiles ; they bask in the stagnant water, hover 
in the air, and swarm on the land. 

“God said, Let the waters bring forth 
Abundantly the moving creature. 

Fowl that may fly above the earth, 

In the open firmament of heaven.” 

It is thus plainly declared, and Job also affirms that 
life was formed in the waters, and the inhabitants — 

“The root was spread out in the waters, 

He draweth me out of the waters ; ” 


226 


FIFTH DAY OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY. 


and we herein see that all life had its progressive begin¬ 
ning in water ; the fishes of the Devonian era were the 
ancestral seed from which sprung the reptiles of the 
fifth day. 

In this reptilian age we behold the first great out¬ 
break of nature, in the almost spontaneous production of 
countless living forms, seemingly without a plan. It was 
the age of conglomerate life. Like the magic crystalline 
forests of the preceding day, the fifth day was the mush¬ 
room magic of incongruous life, a chaos of living forms 
in the nebular state, where no course of natural selection 
had as yet separated into kingdoms, types, and species, 
and perfected nature’s various plans of beauty and utility. 

In this age we view the chaos, the dawn, the dream, 
the prophecy of what shall follow ; the discordant con¬ 
glomeration of material, upon which nature shall work, 
modifying, chiseling, developing, until she perfects all 
the varied types of present existing species. 

We are confronted in this reptilian age with a strange 
panorama of living forms, half fish and half mammal, 
half fish and half bird, half fish and half human ; but we 
seek in vain for types of life approaching the present 
order. With wings or fins, with claws or webs, with 
shells or scales ; swimming, crawling, flying, hopping, 
moves the mighty caravan of reptiles. 

If it were possible to believe in the pictured repre¬ 
sentations of Grecian gods, in which the parts of beings 
are wrongly combined, we could find it here, brought 
together as if by chance or experiment,— a wondrous 
array of creatures, in whose make-up heads and bodies, 
wings and limbs, parts and organs, are mixed as if in 
wild disorder; the head of a dog on a shelled armadillo, 
the wings of an ostrich attached to a serpent, the head 
and neck of a giraffe rising out of the water from the 


AGE OF ABUNDANT LIFE. 


227 


body of a fish, a human body, with the hands and feet 
connected with the long limbs and head of an enormous 
frog; all adjusting themselves more or less to their 
strange environments, whether of air, water, or on land. 
Strange history of histories in the epochs of the tremen¬ 
dous past ! 

The plesiosaurus arches his long neck, the ichthyo¬ 
saurus flaps its huge paddles, the hylaeosaurus, larger than 
the elephant, drags on the shore and stupidly gazes on 
the scene, save when the pterodactyl, or winged dragon, 
plunges upon its antagonist. Huge frogs leap in wild 
disorder, and sea serpents dart to and fro. The iguano- 
don tramples down the tree ferns and feeds on its leaves ; 
the megalosaurus pursues its prey with thundering roar, 
while high above, reptilian birds fly screeching in mid 
air, or dash with huge wings the ocean’s white foam. 

Land and sea witnessed terrible encounters between 
these voracious monsters. Their colossal forms seemed 
made for deadly strife; fierce and savage dispositions 
are pictured in strong jaws, jagged teeth, and vice-like, 
pointed claws. 

Terrified birds plunged shrieking through the air, a 
thousand voices pealed in hoarse tones over the land, and 
reverberated on the sea, as these mighty combatants grap¬ 
pled in deadly strife, and rent the air with thundering- 
roar or dying groan, while poured rivulets of blood from 
lacerated veins. The struggle for existence is here en¬ 
acted on a grand scale, and the heroes of the combat are 
the sires of the future. 

The fossil remains of the beings we have described 
are found in abundance in cretaceous, jurassic, and tri- 
assic rock; also in brown, yellow, and red sandstone, lias, 
oolite, and wealden foreign quarries. 

The fossil remains of these extinct beings have been 


228 


FIFTH DAY OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY. 


collected in American and foreign museums, with slabs of 
stone containing their foot-prints, by which means their 
wondrous history is deciphered. 

It is a solemn and impressive thought that the fossil 
remains and foot-prints of these dumb and senseless 
creatures have been preserved in all their perfection for 
thousands of ages, while so many of the works of man, 
which date but a century back, have been obliterated 
from the records of time. Kings and conquerors have 
marched at the head of armies across continents, and 
piled up aggregates of human suffering and experience to 
the heavens, and all the physical traces of their march 
have totally disappeared ; but the reptile w T hich glided 
along the margins of a Scottish inlet, before the human 
race was born, left foot-prints, and dying, their fossil 
forms, in the soft and shining sand, when it was harden¬ 
ing into rock, which the rising or sinking of continents 
has not obliterated. 

The fifth era began as did the preceding day, by an 
axial change of the earth and a new and nearer orbit 
around the sun, again breaking and distorting the whole 
rocky frame-work of the globe. 

Header, look with the telescope into the asteroid belt 
of small planets. Behold Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Yesta, 
with ice-covered arctic poles, with temperate regions and 
torrid zones ; look down through their pure atmosphere, 
sometimes slightly clouded like our own ; behold on them 
oceans and continents, with mountains and rivers, hills 
and dales ; imagine the abundant outbreak of reptilian 
life, all the geologic monsters of the earth’s reptilian age, 
at which period of the world’s history — 

“ The waters brought forth abundantly, 

And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.” 



Fossil Bones of the Megatherium and Mastodon, Extinct Animals, 

now Inhabiting the Planet Mars. 







































CHAPTER XIX. 


SIXTH DAY OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY —AGE OF CHANGING SKELE¬ 
TON AND COMING BRAIN —A DESCRIPTION WHICH APPLIES 
TO THE PRESENT ON THE PLANET MARS. 

The reconstruction of axis, and the new and nearer 
orbit of the earth around the sun, which marks the open¬ 
ing of the sixth day, and convulsed the rocky frame-work 
of the globe, lifting higher the mountains by a new up¬ 
heaval, or sinking them with whole continents beneath 
rolling seas, changed again the entire relative positions 
of sea and land. 

Polar night gathers about the antipodes of a former 
equator ; while continents of arctic ice lift their white 
bosoms and cold, crystal, mountain heads to the glare of 
a torrid sun ; and the warm water of the oceans comes 
pouring in, unlocking the ice barriers, and forming stu¬ 
pendous glaciers, which are borne slowly away, in 
extensive deep strata of crystal white ; planing the mount¬ 
ains and chiseling their rocks into fragments, finally 
breaking into detached icebergs, loaded with boulders 
and drift-rock, which float far off into melting seas. 

I am aware that the glacial epoch has been an in¬ 
explicable mystery to geologists, and that they are in the 
habit of assigning only one such era as having occurred 
in all the past. The evidences of glacial action are nu¬ 
merous, and can be found in almost every part of the 
inhabited globe. Finding them the natural product of 
the changes of the earth’s polar position, local in ex- 

1231] 


232 SIXTH DAY OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY. 

tent and time, we are forced to the conclusion that there 
has been not one, but many such eras; they were pres¬ 
ent following all the later changes of the earth’s axis. 

The sixth day, commencing as it did by an over¬ 
turning of the earth itself, wrecking the crust by stupen¬ 
dous earthquakes and volcanoes ; added to the agitated 
oceans, stalking in tidal waves, with a mighty flood 
sweeping over the landscape, in contact with continents 
of melting ice, and a long glacial period ; while frigid 
cold gathers about the two antipodes of former equatorial 
regions ; making thereby a new atlas of the earth itself, 
and producing radical changes in air, water, and soil, also 
in the climatic conditions necessary for life ; under the 
rays of a new and brighter sun, shall we not expect won¬ 
drous changes in all the struggling forms and types of 
life ? 

These universal changes were the deatli-knell to the 
great saurian tribes ; the few which escaped the first in¬ 
gulfing maelstrom of death, were stunned and dwarfed 
by new conditions of cold and climate, and one by one 
took their places in the oblivion of the past. 

Survive or perish, conform to conditions, respond to 
environments, become acclimated, were the imperative 
demands of nature ; and these saurians, suddenly trans¬ 
ported into a new soil and climate, perished in countless 
millions on the earth. But a few take root and live, 
metamorphosed by conditions, transformed as if by cul¬ 
tivation, by a process of physical molding so radical 
that the few alone survived. 

The creative fiat, in eternal causation, demanded a 
higher type of life, and the forces of its molding were 
terrific and severe; all the elements were brought to 
bear, to change, transform, and make new. There was a 


AGE OF CHANGING SKELETON AND COMING BRAIN. 


233 


terrific struggle for existence, in which the fittest alone 
survived, with the law of parentage marking progeny, 
and arming its offspring to successful combat against the 
forces of its own destruction. The law of correlation and 
harmony of parts, forced radical changes in the whole 
anatomy, keeping pace with slight changes in given parts ; 
head and limbs kept pace with advancing skeleton, and 
hand and foot were modified by advancing brain. 

New and higher types sprung from sources where 
least expected, crossings and amalgamations were even 
more numerous then than now. 

Conform to conditions, change or perish, was the fiat 
of nature. By this law the twigs and brakes of the Alps 
and Andes become the giants of tropical valleys; the 
stunned weeds of the mountains in the valleys become 
mighty ferns and cedars, covering acres with their 
shadows ; while the hardy giants of the valleys, pine and 
maple, high up near the line of perpetual snow, become 
dwarfed, bushy weeds. The minnows of our cold streams 
become great fish in deeper waters, and the blind fish of 
the Mammoth Cave and other dark caverns, when bred in 
sunny waters, after a few generations transmit to their 
offspring fully developed eyes ; — such is the force of en¬ 
vironments ; such the iron hand of nature’s moldings ; 
such the fiat of creative causation. 

Standing here on the threshold of the sixth day, 
amid the stupendous changes in air, climate, water, and 
sky ; upon a new earth, under a new heaven, where Hashes 
down a nearer, larger, and brighter sun, surrounded with 
new oceans, where millions of saurians are battling with 
the elements for their lives ; will it be out of the radius of 
natural expectations, if in coming generations we behold 
a new panorama of life, a caravan of living beings, 



234 


SIXTH DAY OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. 


unlike their parentage of preceding ages, and approaching 
nearer the dawn of the day in which we live? Let us 
then take a rapid survey of the life of the sixth day. 

Cuvier w r as the iirst to collect the fossil skeletons of 
mammals, mastodons, and numerous extinct species of 
the tertiary age : but more recently naturalists have filled 
the museums with the once living forms of this era. The 
deposits in which they are found consist of drift, sand, 
upper sandstones, clay, chalk, peat, pebbles, etc., con¬ 
stituting essentially the surface strata of the globe. 
Changes, however, in the earth’s crust, by the last great 
deluge, somewhat modify this statement. 

The scenery of the sixth day had all the sublimity 
and grandeur of the present; the billows sang the re¬ 
quiem of entombed monsters, but equally gigantic mon¬ 
sters supplied their places. In the dense forests and 
through the tangled jungles moved numerous forms of 
life, browsing the herbage, or preying on each other. 

Dinotherium, or the terrible beast, roared in the 
swamps ; mammoths, rhinoceroses, mastodons, elephants, 
hippopotamuses, the alligator, and the gavial, existed in 
their native wilds. 

The cry of wolves and foxes rang through the forests, 
mingled with the deep guttural tones of bears and hyenas ; 
the wild horse, reindeer, and antelope, the opossum, kan¬ 
garoo, and elk, in short, many of the now existing types 
of animal life, were represented. 

Birds of varied plumage hovered in the trees and 
filled the air with song. 

Among the trees, tribes of monkeys of various sizes, 
color, and species sported in playful glee ; and it has 
been demonstrated by Tipinard, the French anthropolo¬ 
gist and others, that various beasts in half human form 




Extinct Antediluvian Monsters. Fossil Bones of 
Mammoth and Elk. 


r235] 






























































. 











AGE OF CHANGING SKELETON AND COMING BRAIN. 237 

existed, in some respects resembling, but more varied in 
type and species than, the present existing tribes of 
gorillas, orangs, monkeys, apes, and chimpanzees. 

This day represented a period of time, as we have 
shown by astronomical reckonings, of approximately six 
hundred thousand years, and perhaps continued until the 
last great deluge. 

The higher we ascend in the strata of the sixth day, 
the nearer do fossil forms approach the appearance of 
present species ; and this is true conversely, the begin¬ 
ning of the age as indicated by underlying strata is 
marked by the close resemblance of earlier fossil forms, 
and the intermingling of the saurians of the fifth day. 

The sixth day was an age of steady unfolding and 
progress ; one by one types and families of life became 
extinct, and one by one higher types took their places. 
Types, tribes, and races were crossing and amalgamating, 
and climbing upward to new forms, and here and there 
assuming face, hand, and form, with erect bearing, and 
prophesying future man. 

“ God said, Let us make man in our image.” 

We will leave this age here in the middle of the 
record, both as regards the testimony of the rocks and 
the testimony of the Bible, and after discussing other 
subjects, already implied, we will return to the thread of 
our connection. Let it be remembered, then, that we 
drop our history here in the middle of the sixth day. 
hereafter to consider the remainder of the long era when 
man arose from the garden of Eden, and enacted mighty 
volumes of a long, tremendous history before the flood. 

Reader, look with the telescope at the planet Mars; 
see the clear outline of her arctic and antarctic regions, 


238 


SIXTH DAY OF TEE WORLD’S HISTORY. 


covered with white crystal continents of ice and snow. 
Behold her temperate and tropical belts, see the white 
line extending towards the equator in winter, and reced¬ 
ing towards the poles in summer; the oceans can be dis¬ 
tinguished by a greenish tinge, and the valleys intervening 
between mountains capped in white, present a bluish hue. 

Here is being enacted again all the wild, weird, pic¬ 
turesque scenes and varied phenomena, with the beautiful 
changing landscapes, of the earth’s sixth day. Here are 
oceans of transparent blue, and waters of variegated green, 
dashing mighty tides at regular intervals, amid continents 
of grandeur and isles of summer-eden. Here are mag¬ 
nificent mountains, with grand heads of white reaching 
heavenward; here are majestic rivers, pouring out cata¬ 
racts of foaming water, wreathed in rainbows. Here are 
valleys with cold, gushing springs, and streams reflecting 
silver from a genial sun ; here are forests of magnificent 
trees, wafting lights and shades ; hero are prairies of rank 
grasses beautified with flowers. 

Here on the planet Mars is being enacted the pano¬ 
rama of life and death ; a long carnival of animal life, 
and among them gorillas, chimpanzees, orangs, apes, and 
monkeys, while from the hidden recesses of caves, emerge 
half human and various savage forms. Not in God’s 
image, no ; but beings with form and contour of man, 
caricatures of humanity, in whose brain has been planted 
a rising cunning and seed of reason ; into whose nostrils 
is being reflected the breath of life, with a dim conception 
of right and wrong, to become a living soul. 

In yon bright valley, carpeted with green and spark¬ 
ling with ten thousand colored flowers, where singing 
birds are making a happy concert with whispering zeph- 


AGE OF CHANGING SKELETON AN!) COMING BRAIN. 230 


yrs and purling rills ; a place of divine beauty, a paradise 
of fruit-bearing trees, a veritable garden of Eden ; here 
God created man in his own image, infusing into bis 
heart the leaven of love and reason. 

Here Adamah and Heva nursed and nurtured their 
rising family. From this valley went out Nimero the 
mighty hunter, from whom sprung Zabal, father of all 
the tribes now dwelling in tents ; who was the ancestral 
seed and parent of Noral, the praying hermit of yonder 
mountain ; who with his family, and a chosen few, are 
now engaged in the building of a rude strange ship. 

Around him, on every side, in every valley, on all 
the continents, prowl half human monsters, savages of 
tierce and terrible aspect, brutal men, with heads receding 
and protruding jaws, with alert, secretive step, ready to 
pounce on their prey. 

For the sake of progress and a future higher human¬ 
ity, let fall the earthquake, the thunderbolt, and flood, 
axial changes, and a new orbit; convulse with fire and 
water the planet Mars ; wipe out the sin and crime, the 
degradation and misery; but rescue the builders of the 
ship, with its precious, selected freight and seed of life, 
to replenish and re-inhabit the continents of beauty, the 
isles of Eden. 


CHAPTER XX. 


GEOLOGIC SUMMING UP —TIME IS LONG —GLACIAL ERAS. 

“ Ip all the books were written, the 
World itself would not contain them.” 

The explored strata of the earth are meager, when 
compared with the unexplored portions of the earth’s 
crust. Only a small portion of the earth’s crust is acces¬ 
sible to man ; four fifths of its entire surface are covered 
with water, and polar ice buries the antipodes of two 
mighty continents, while impenetrable wildernesses still 
occupy the greater part of the remaining portion. 

Thus confined to a few limited points of the earth, 
and here only the surface is presented to the student of 
nature ; true, the upheavals which have taken place in 
all the ages have lifted to the surface various underlying 
strata; from these isolated leaves we have deduced a 
history. 

In these rock records, however, the general order of 
progressive evolution is clear ; the known facts of geol¬ 
ogy, therefore, stand out like broken fragments of nu¬ 
merals in a long column of figures, 1-2-5-9-10. At the 
bottom, geology finds corals ; next above, it discovers 
shells ; higher still, it finds fossil fishes ; above, it dis¬ 
covers rock containing reptiles ; and still higher, it finds 
the remains of mammals ; above all, is found human 
fossils. 

[ 240 ] 


TIME rs LONG. 


241 


The record of all explored rock lias never deviated 
from the order of advance ; true, there are wide chasms 
of unexplored rock in this progressive column of nu¬ 
merals ; but in the same manner as astronomy predicted, 
weighed, and measured Uranus and the asteroids in va¬ 
cant, unexplored gaps between planets, and their predic¬ 
tions were verified by the telescope, in like manner it is 
the province of geology to fill up the chasms, and we 
have a complete order of progressive numerals, 1-2-3-4- 
5-6—7—8—9, etc. 

Hence it is the natural inference that the higher have 
been evolved from the lower, — that the last were the prog¬ 
eny of the first. In the study of geology we are con¬ 
stantly impressed with the tremendous periods of time, 
the long ages required to form even a single stratum of 
the earth’s crust. The mind, bewildered, confounded, in 
its attempt to fathom these flights of time, has asked if 
geology be not the book of eternity: — what room for 
every-day changes to heap up wonders ; for life to climb 
upward, through slow, painful progress,' through birth 
and death, growth and decay, holding in its make the 
same clay that lived in other forms, yet leaving behind, 
in ruin and in rock, the debris of death heaped upon 
death, skeleton heaped upon skeleton, forming on the 
surface of the globe a crust miles in depth of the great 
tomb of death. 

What cycles of ages ! What eternities lie behind us 
in the past history of our globe ! And these eternities 
give ample room if there is any tendency towards prog¬ 
ress, to produce in the long train of generations, from the 
paleozoic fishes of the first seas, to the present time, this 
being with brain and hand, of heavenward glance, seizing 



242 


GEOLOGIC SUMMING UP. 


the lightnings and compelling the elements to become his 
subservient slaves. 

Louis Agassiz, in speaking of geologic time, says: 
“Among the astounding discoveries of modern science, 
is that of the immense periods that have passed in the 
gradual formations of the earth. So vast were the cycles 
of the time preceding even the appearance of man on the 
surface of our globe, that our own period seems as yester¬ 
day when compared with the epochs that have gone be¬ 
fore it. Had we only the evidence of the deposits of rocks 
heaped above each other in regular strata, by the slow 
accumulations of materials, they alone would convince us 
of the long and slow maturing of God’s work on earth ; 
but when we add to these successive populations of wdiose 
life this world has been the theater, and whose remains 
are hidden in the rocks, into which the mud, sand, or soil, 
of whatever kind on which they lived, has hardened in 
the course of time ; or the enormous change of mount¬ 
ains, whose upheaval divided these periods of quiet ac¬ 
cumulation by great convulsions ; or the changes of a 
different nature in the configuration of our globe, as the 
sinking of land beneath the ocean, or the gradual rising 
of continents and islands above it; or the slow growth of 
the coral reefs,—those wonderful sea-walks, raised by the 
ocean architects, whose own bodies furnish both the build¬ 
ing stone and cement that binds them together, who have 
worked so busily during the long centuries that there are 
extensive mountain plateaus and islands, and long lines 
of coast consisting solely of their remains ; or the count¬ 
less forests that have grown up, flourished, died, and de¬ 
cayed, to fill the store-houses of coal that feed the fires of 
the human race. If we consider all these records of the 
past, the intellect fails to grasp a chronology of which our 


SURVIVORS OF THE GLACIAL EPOCH. [243] 
















































































TIME IS LONG. 


245 


experience furnishes us no data, and time that flies behind 
us seems as much an eternity to our conception as the 
future that stretches indefinitely before us.” 

Lyell has well remarked, the extent and thickness of 
our sedimentary formations are the result and the measure 
of the denudations which the earth's crust has elsewhere 
undergone, therefore a man should examine for himself 
the great piles of superimposed strata, and watch the re¬ 
sults of the sea bringing down mud as the waves wear 
away the cliffs in order to comprehend something about 
the duration of past time, the monuments of which we 
see all around us. 

The ocean has been the great leveler by which hills 
and mountains have been washed away and strewn over 
its coralline floor ; its waves never rest; ceaseless as the 
march of time, in gentle, calm, or angry storm, it labors 
on in its self-appointed task. 

Says Darwin, “It is good to wander along the coast, 
when formed of moderately hard rocks, and mark the 
progress of degradation. The tides in most cases reach 
the cliffs only for a short time twice a day, and the waves 
eat into them in proportion as they are charged with sand 
or pebbles ; at last the base of the cliff is undermined, 
huge fragments fall down, and the parts remaining have 
to be worn away atom by atom, until, being reduced in 
size, they can be rolled about by the waves, when they 
are more quickly ground into pebbles, sand, or mud ; but 
how often do we see along the base of retreating cliffs 
rounded boulders all thickly clothed with marine produc¬ 
tions, showing how T little they are abraded, and how 
seldom they are rolled about. Moreover, if we follow 
for a few miles any line of rocky cliff which is undergoing 
degradation, we find that it is only here and there, along 


GEOLOGIC Sl’MMlNG UP. 


246 


a short length, that the cliffs are at the present time 
suffering ; and the vegetation growing elsewhere on the 
shores conveys an idea of the years that have elapsed 
since the waters washed their base.'* 

Steel remarks : “ Estimating the past by the present 
rate of change, it must be immense, so that even if we 
could express it in centuries and years, w T e could form no 
idea of the aggregate any more than we can comprehend 
the distances that separate our earth from the fixed stars. 
This idea of immense duration of time is suggested at the 
first examination of the stratified rocks. All that geology 
attempts, at present, is to arrange in regular order the 
various stages of progress in the history of the earth’s 
crust, leaving it for the future to decide upon the length 
of the different epochs. As yet we know only that 4 time 
is long, ’ and hence estimate it by ages, eras, and periods, 
rarely venturing more than an occasional hint at their 
relative duration. There is an eternity of time as well as 
of space in which God works out his almighty plan of 
creation. Whatever may have been our preconceived 
notions, we should come to the study of nature with a 
reverent, teachable spirit, seeking to learn its mysteries, 
to comprehend its plan, and to understand the ways of 
him who created all things.” 

Before closing this chapter and the geologic part of 
this work, we will mention a few facts, in support of our 
position, that the earth has revolved on other polar cen¬ 
ters, and that arctic ice has at different periods of the 
world’s history covered nearly every portion of its sur¬ 
face, and that immense glaciers, with detached icebergs, 
have left their records on almost every known continent 
and island. 


BOULDERS. 


247 


Beds of rock and earth are found in various places on 
both continents, in both hemispheres, left deposited on 
other strata totally different in character from each other; 
granite, gneiss, trap, and various other substances are 
now found often on top of limestone shale and clay, often 
in great aggregations. These rocks and substances are 
often worn and grooved, bearing the same marks of trans¬ 
portation that are now found in the glacial deposits of the 
arctic circle. The nearest places where these boulders are 
found mingled with rock of a like character in their native 
bed, are often hundreds of miles distant. The boulders, 
or “lost rocks," as they are. sometimes called, are found 
in North and South America, in Europe, Asia, and Af¬ 
rica, bearing the marks of glacial grooves. 

Lvell has discovered the marks and boulders above 

V 

enumerated on the Alps, high up above present glaciers. 
The average height of the Jura Mountains is about one 
third that of the Alps ; these mountains are now destitute 
of glaciers, yet they present almost everywhere moraines 
or deposits of rock and boulders foreign to them, also 
polished and grooved surfaces made by glacial action, a 
phenomenon which has perplexed the geologists for more 
than a half century. The conclusion is incontestible that 
the numerous angular blocks of granite came from the 
Alps, fitting as they do the exact dimensions, with every 
seam intact, the assumed place of their native bed. 
These boulders and blocks of stone were transported a 
distance of over fifty miles, across one of the deepest 
valleys on the globe, so that these granite blocks are now 
found deposited on the hills and valleys of a stratum com¬ 
posed of limestone and other formations totally unlike the 
rock of the Alps. Their great size and angularity after a 


248 


GEOLOGIC SUMMING UP. 


journey of so many miles have justly excited wonder, 
hundreds of them being larger than cottages ; and one in 
particular, known by the name of u Pierre,” rests on a 
hill nine hundred feet high and is two hundred feet in 
circumference. The only possible explanation of the 
transportation of these rocks is in rafts of early ice, when 
the Alps were in the oceans of ice-covered arctic regions. 

In Greenland, on its western coast, is a glacier one 
thousand miles long, having a perpendicular wall of ice 
two thousand feet high ; unlike the Alpine glaciers, which 
melt in the warm valleys below them, this Greenland 
glacier empties into the ocean, and breaking into de¬ 
tached fragments, or mountain icebergs, floats away to 
be dissolved in the warm water of southern seas ; thou¬ 
sands of these icebergs, freighted with the rock they 
have torn from underlying ledges, constituting immense 
boulders, now throng the northern oceans, floating south 
with their burdens of rock. 

Could we examine the trough of these ice-rafts, we 
would doubtless find, as to-day we find in the boulders of 
the Alps and elsewhere on every continent, scratches or 
plowed grooves and polished surfaces, in blocks deposited 
in long trains, where the blocks have scraped along by 
their momentum, and at last stranded ; depositing their 
load on the top of petrified forests, coral reefs, or sand¬ 
stone made up of living remains. In this manner, trans¬ 
ported by ice, is found the evidences of arctic seas, with 
continents of ice which once covered, not only the North 
American continent, but the South American continent 
also; and at another period, Africa, and at still other 
periods, Europe, Asia, and Australia ; such boulders and 
grooved rocks being found deposited in great moraines, 


ANCIENT RIVER BED3. 


24D 


among and upon all the mountains in all the continents 
named. 

There are river channels of the Old World, back of 
not merely one, but perhaps a number, of the earth’s 
polar changes. These ancient abandoned river-courses 
are frequently found by excavations, mines, artesian 
wells, when boring for oil, etc. 

While digging a canal to the mills of Lowell, Massa¬ 
chusetts, an old river-bed was found under the drift, the 
upper plane of which had since been leveled by the car¬ 
riage and action of ice. 

Mr. Croll believes that the last great glacial period 
occurred two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, hav¬ 
ing endured for one hundred and sixty thousand years. 

With respect to more ancient glacial periods, several 
eminent geologists believe that they occurred during the 
miocene and eocene formations. 

In the ‘‘Origin of the Species,” page 236, Darwin 
quotes the following authorities, in his own language : 
‘ ‘ There are evidences of glacial action in Africa, and 
along the Himalayas at points nine hundred miles apart. 
Southward of the Asiatic continent we know from the 
excellent researches of Dr. Hast and Dr. Hector that in 
New Zealand immense glaciers formerly ascended to a 
high level, telling the same story of a cold period. It 
appears that there are traces of former glacial action on 
the mountains of Australia. Erratic boulders have been 
noticed on the Kocky Mountains, in the Corderilla of 
South America nearly under the equator. In central 
Chili I examined a vast mound of detritus with great 
boulders crossing the Portillo Valley, which once formed 
a huge glacial moraine.” 


250 


GEOLOGIC SUMMING UP. 


There is a glacial moraine in Massachusetts extend¬ 
ing hundreds of miles ; angular blocks of slate were torn 
from the mountains of Camden county, New York State, 
and are deposited in a train running southeast obliquely 
over mountain ridges, hills, and valleys. One of the 
huge slate blocks is now deposited in Berkshire county ; 
it contains sixteen hundred cubit feet, and can be located 
in its native bed in the York mountains. 

The theory most generally accepted by geologists to 
account for this array of glacial facts, is that the earth 
slowly oscillates from pole to pole, extending the ice- 
covered arctic region to the equator first in the northern, 
then as it recedes and the earth oscillates, comes an ice 
period to the southern hemisphere. 

In the flood of light which our studies on the earth’s 
axial, orbital, and elliptic motion has brought to us, the 
explanation of glacial periods becomes clear, and add 
their weight of evidence to facts from other sources, that 
the earth has revolved on other axial centers and pursued 
other orbits around the sun. 

That in periods of approximately six hundred thou¬ 
sand years, the earth’s momentum is suddenly overthrown 
by atmospheric currents, and our world is compelled to 
assume a new axis of motion, bringing the ice regions 
suddenly under the glare of a tropical sun, to form gla¬ 
ciers and icebergs, and melting, leave there evidence on 
temperate or tropical landscapes. 

The glacial periods have been the mystery of geolo¬ 
gists, but are made clear and simple in the light of sud¬ 
den polar changes. 


AURORA BOREALIS, AS OBSERVED BY DR. FRANKLIN IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS. [251] 










































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































CHAPTER XXL 


WHIRLWIND AND DELUGE OF FIRE —SODOM AND GOMORRAH. 


‘‘And the stars of heaven fell upon the earth ; 

Even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs 
When she is shaken of a mighty wind. 

Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah 
Brimstone and fire, from the Lord out of heaven.” 

There was a time far back in the eternities when our 
sun, with all his brood of shining planets, was a cosmos 
of unorganized matter, “without form and void.” The 
substance of our sun and system filled the boundaries of 
the most remote planets with one stupendous nebula. 

From this chaos of material, gathered and condensed 
by the slow process of cometary fires, has come our sun 
•and an infinite brood of planets ; comets still swarm our 
system, drinking up the residual gases of the planetary 
spaces ; and extensive fields of the original cosmos fill 
vast regions of the solar system, intermingled with, and 
holding gossamer folds between the planets, in the form 
of the Aurora Borealis. 

When we consider the rapidity of the earth’s axial 
and orbital motion, and look through the earth’s atmos¬ 
phere into the adjacent space, oftentimes filled with cos¬ 
mic matter, aglow with light, is it any wonder that the 
northern lights should thus show lightning flashes and 
streaming prisms of rapidly fleeting colors ? 

[253 j 


254 


WHIRLWIND AND DELUGE OF FIRE. 


You have looked out of a rapidly-moving car win¬ 
dow, and experienced nearly the same phenomenon on 
a minute scale ; our world spins with almost lightning 
speed, and the gossamer folds a few hundred miles above 
us, flash by like an electric display. 

The number of lesser and outer planets belonging to 
our system, is unknown. One hundred and fifty asteroids 
have been counted, and astronomers compute that one 
hundred and fifty thousand of these small planets exist in 
the gap between Mars and Jupiter. 

Going outward near the orbits of the remote planets, 
small bodies could not be distinguished, even by the aid 
of powerful telescopes. The smaller planets, as such, be¬ 
longing to our system are, without doubt, more numerous 
than has been conceived; so also of comets. Lalande 
had a list of seven hundred comets observed in his day ; 
Arago estimated that the comets belonging to our solar 
system, within, or liable to come within, the orbit 
of Neptune, numbered seventeen million ; while Lam¬ 
bert regards five hundred million as a moderate esti¬ 
mate. Thus planets and comets are scattered through 
the heavens with as much profusion as the fishes in the 
sea. 

The stupendous body of the sun itself has been built 
up by a continous rain-fall of planets, comets, meteors, 
and cosmic matter; by which source his fires are con¬ 
stantly replenished, and rays of heat, light, and caloric 
force sent back again, to replenish the cosmic, nebulous 
meadows of space. 

That planets sometimes collide, drawn together by 
attraction, forming thereby larger bodies, is plausible and 
probable ; and that planets sometimes become enveloped 
in comets, uniting with the nucleus in a new glow of fire, 


lexell’s comet. 


255 


attracting the oscillating tail into a new and more exten¬ 
sive atmosphere, is also a proposition sanctioned by logic. 

In the year 1779, Lexell’s comet approached so near 
the earth as to excite serious apprehension; the comet 
crossed the earth’s orbit one month prior to the earth, 
and going outward passed through the midst of Jupiter’s 
satellites, and became temporarily entangled among them. 

Says Ignasius Donnelly, u The comet might have 
covered Jupiter one hundred feet thick ; yes, a hundred 
miles, with gravel and clay, and formed clouds of her 
seas five hundred miles in thickness, without our knowing 
anything about it,” even by the aid of the most powerful 
telescopes, hundreds of miles appearing only as a dot 
or line in the immense distance. The comet, however, 
was greatly demoralized by the contact; she lost her 
original orbit, went mysteriously out into space, and has 
never been heard of since : unless the planet Neptune, 
shortly afterwards discovered by Galen, was the product 
of her reorganized and reconstructed substance. 

It is not unreasonable to suppose that an event which 
thus demoralized the comet may have caused it to cast 
down a considerable portion of its material on the face of 
Jupiter. “The period of Encke’s comet around the sun 
is constantly diminishing, so that if this progressive 
diminution continues always at the same rate, the time 
when the comet will be plunged into the sun can be cal¬ 
culated.” When we consider the numerous comets around 
us, and when we remember how near some of them have 
come to the earth in the last few years, if we believe the 
astronomers ; who will undertake to say, during the long 
periods of the earth’s history, what erratic luminaries with 
blazing front and train of meteors may not have come in 
collision with the earth? 


14 


256 


WHIRLWIND AND DELUGE OF FIRE. 


The earth everywhere presents evidence of external 
fiery contact, and perhaps, as ably asserted by Ignasius 
Donnelly in his u Age of Fire and Gravel,” a considerable 
part of the underlying or overlying substances of the earth 
may have been the result of precipitation from cometous 
contact. 

“We are astonished,” says Humboldt, u at being 
able to touch, weigh, and chemically decompose substances 
which belong to the outer world, to celestial space ; to find 
in them the materials of our native earth, making it pos¬ 
sible, as the great Newton conjectured, that the materials 
which belong to one group of cosmical bodies are for the 
most part the same,” having had a common origin in 
that early cyclone, tempest, and wreck of former suns and 
systems, which diffused matter and force into infinite 
space, and made possible the birth and development of 
our stellar system. 

The eminent German geologist, Dr. Hahn, has re¬ 
cently discovered in meteoric stones of the class called 
chromidites, principles by which he identifies them as be¬ 
longing to classes of sponges or corals : Dr. Weinland, 
another distinguished German, corroborates these discov¬ 
eries, and he has also found in meteoric stones, chalk, 
very much like the youngest marine chalk in the Gulf of 
Mexico, and he declares that under the microscope he 
finds traces of vegetable growth. Francis Brigham says, 
“This entire ex-terrestrial fauna hitherto discovered, 
which already comprise about fifty different species, ob¬ 
tained from different meteoric falls, conveys the impres¬ 
sion that it once formed part of an ex-terrestrial celestial 
body, with a unique creation, which in by-gone ages was 
overtaken by a grand catastrophe, and diffused into frag¬ 
ments. When we remember that meteors are generally 


COMETS AND PLANETS COMPOSED ALIKE. 


257 


believed to be the dross of elements identical with the 
substances which compose comets, these facts come very 
near to prove that this is no new creation, for only under 
conditions similar to our own can we suppose life ever 
existed, for there was required for the growth of these 
meteoric corals, sponges, and crenoids, water, air, and 
sunshine, and a temperature between the degrees of fire 
and freezing cold. 

In speaking of the fact that the heavenly bodies are 
formed of the same material as our globe, Dana says, 
“Meteoric stones exemplify the same chemical and crys¬ 
talline laws as the earth, and have afforded no new ele¬ 
ment or principle of any kind.” 

How much of the dust and surface substance of the 
earth has been precipitated upon it from without in the 
form of meteors and contact with comets, science is yet 

* 

unable to determine. But that the earth has a number of 
times actually passed through extensive tracts of nebula, 
or comets, is the almost universal opinion of astronomers. 
It is probable that the inhabited world has witnessed such 
fiery ordeals ; that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed 
and portions of the world denuded with fire and meteoric 
stones which fell from heaven. 

Legends, handed down to us, of the destruction of the 
ancient world by fire raining down from heaven, are as 
numerous among the tongues and nations of the earth, as 
are legends of its destruction by a great deluge of water. 

The “flaming sword” of Genesis, coming in between 
our world and the garden of Eden, is supposed to symbolize 
the Edenic condition of our world, prior to its destruction 
by a comet; and Job becomes intelligible in this light 
when he refers to the “ crooked ” and “winding serpent,” 

“ Leviathan : ” 


258 


WHIRLWIND AND DELUGE OF FIRE. 


“ The apostate dragon, when he poured dust 
On the earth and the clods hardened together ; 

His body is like molten shields shut close up ; 

Before him go burning lamps like torches of fire.” 

Such sentences have no meaning unless descriptive of the 
earth’s collision with a comet, and the fire and meteors 
which fell from it. 

Written in the rocky pages of the earth are records 
of visitations from the comets. No traces are left of 
their destructive power save huge deposits of charred 
substances locked away between great layers of sediment¬ 
ary rocks. 

And here we stumble over a still more tremendous 
fact told by Professor Winchell, that the granite, the 
foundation of all our rocks, the primitive molten crust of 
the original, glowing ball of the earth when it hardened 
as it cooled,— this ancient globe-crust is itself made up 
of particles of sedimentary rocks which were melted, 
fused, and run together in a conflagration of fire. 

Even here in the granite, the foundation-floor of the 
world, is a record of seas and shores, winds and rains, 
rivers and sediment, carried into the waters to form the 
atoms melted up in this granite. 

Not the present only, but many orders of suns and 
systems,, lie behind us in eternity ; and possibly in the 
very matter composing this granite were the remains of 
animals and man, melted and fused together. 

Who shall count the ebbs and flows of eternity ? who 
shall count the possibilities of matter and force, which 
are eternal? What rain-falls of stars, what collidings 
and mixings of elements, what destructions of former 
universes, what endless series of new systems and new 
suns with their appendages of inhabitable worlds, the 


WAY-MARKS OF TWO ETERNITIES. 


259 


eternity of God may have witnessed, are records alone 
open to him ; we look over and contemplate the wonder¬ 
ful evidences, dim markings of the past, hieroglyphics 
from former creations, 

“Way-marks of two eternities.” 


We may not find a more appropriate place than this 
to state that it has been in order to convey a clear idea of 
the great general law, that all planets born from con¬ 
densing comets, begin their revolutions in remote paths 
around the sun, step by step assuming positions nearer 
and nearer to him, at last falling into his fires ; — it was 
in order to set forth this law in a clear and comprehensive 
manner, that this volume has arranged the planets into 
what may appear to some an order of evolution too ex¬ 
act, precise, and strained. 

We do not mean, absolutely, that the earth, in exact 
and definite epochs, has occupied the precise positions of, 
with contour measured exactly by, all the outer planets. 
But we do mean and it is one of the objects of this vol¬ 
ume to elucidate, that the general law of the creation and 
evolution of all planets, is from the circumference to the 
center, from the outer confines of our system towards the 
sun, the final tomb, end, and resurrection of them all. 



CHAPTER XXII. 


BIBLICAL CRITICISM — EGYPT, INDIA —THE BOOK OF THE DEAD, 
THE VEDAS —ADAM THE NAME OF A RACE. 

“ Is not this written in the book of Jasher ?” 

Adam was the ancient name of a mighty human 
epoch, a race of people who made their advent on the 
earth, far back in the night of an immense antiquity ; in 
whom first dawned human reason and the blending of 
such qualities — 

‘ ‘ That nature could stand up and say 
To all the world, This is a man.” 

The Adam of Jewish mythology, the symbolic and 
traditional father of his people, the Adam of the second 
chapter of Genesis, was not the first man, nor the first 
Adam ; the first chapter of Genesis bluntly declares that 
he was not. 1 

1 Adam was, it appears, a red man. Winchell tells us that “ Adam ” 
is derived from the red earth. The radical letters, ADfiM are found in 
ADa MaH, “something out of which vegetation was made to germinate; ” 
to wit, the earth. ADoM and ADOM signify red, ruddy, bay colored, as of 
a horse, the color of a red heifer; “ ADAM, a man, a human being, male or 
female, red, ruddy.” (Preadamites, page 161.) 

“ It appears ” says Ramsey, in his “ Preadamite Man,” “ that the term 
‘ ha adam,’ generally used in the pointed text, that in Hebrew the prefix ‘ ha’ 
is equivalent to our ‘the,’ and is of course an article, while ‘Adam’ was a 
proper name, and a collective patronymic, like ‘Israel,’ ‘Jacob,’ ‘Gideon,’ 
‘Dan,’ and ‘ Reuben.’ Though in some sense the term ‘ Adam,’ differs from 
the others, in as mnffi as it was a generic epithet. ‘Adam,’ without the 
[ 260 ] 


ADAM THE NAME OF A RACE. 


261 


A mighty race of Adam, a numerous tribe of Adam, 
a populous and powerful kingdom of Adam, inhabited 
this earth for nine hundred and thirty years, peopling the 
plains and multiplying on the continents; such a people 
had lived and died; acted out the panorama of their 
history, disappeared from the earth and been forgotten, 
ages prior to the second or Jewish Adam. 

The second chapter of Genesis contains a symbolic 
story of the second Adam, while the first chapter of 
Genesis tells us that on the sixth day — 

“God created man ; male and female created he them, 

And said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, 

Subdue the earth ; eat of the fruit of every tree.” 

At the close of the first chapter of Genesis — omit 
the three following chapters—and at the commencement 
of the fifth chapter, you w r ill find the continuation of the 
same historic narrative, written in the same style, with the 

0 

term “God” commencing every verse; while the inter¬ 
vening chapters are written in another style, with the 
term “Lord God ” commencing every verse. 

Taking up, therefore, the continued thread of the 
narrative, ending with the first, and beginning with the 
fifth chapter of Genesis, we read again, that — 

article ‘ ha ’ was the name of the Hebrew protoplast, with the article ‘ ha,’ 
the name of a race, or the whole human race.” 

Says a British author, “ ‘ Adam ’ was a generic epithet, a collective noun 
signifying ‘The Adamites;’ ‘ha adam ’ is a vague singular, but virtually a 
plural. The Septuagint has ‘ha-adamah,’ which is probably the better ren¬ 
dering.” 

“ * Adam,’ ” says the same author, “ signifies ‘redness,’ ‘red earth,’ or 
‘ red men.’ ” 

Josephus also (book the first) says, “ ‘ Adam,’ which in the Hebrew 
tongue signifies one that is red, because he was formed out of red earth, com¬ 
pounded together.” 


262 


BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 


“God created man, male and female created he them, 

And blessed them, and called their name Adam.” 

But when these people had existed as long as the 
American government, one hundred and thirty years, 
they began to establish colonies, begetting sons and 
daughters. The name of the first colony which sprung 
from Adam was Seth. Adam continued in existence for 
nine hundred and thirty years, when this mighty people, 
like Egypt, Greece, Rome, and numerous past nations of 
the earth, went out of existence. Seth, however, still 
prospered, and continued in existence nine hundred and 
twelve years. When Seth, however, was in his one hun¬ 
dred and fiftieth year, an emigration went out of him, 
founding the new kingdom of Enos, and all the days of 
Enos were nine hundred and five years. 

In this manner pursues the record in its long chain 
of historic connection, of races, tribes, and tongues that 
followed each other in the long line of succession. 

The oldest of all these ancient races was Methuselah, 
who lived to the great age, continuing in existence for 
nine hundred and sixty-nine years, perpetuating the same 
customs, and begetting sons and daughters ; when like 
the history of all the races of the earth, this powerful 
people took its place in the oblivion of the past. This 
nation existed to an age and became older than the pres¬ 
ent government of China, older than hieroglyphical or 
monumental Egypt, older than imperial or republican 
Rome ; and was without doubt the oldest government that 
ever existed on the face of the globe. 

This record of races continues through two whole 
chapters, giving names of kingdoms and tongues, until 
we come down to the kingdom of Noah, which existed 
five hundred years. 


ADAM, SETH, METHUSELAH, NOAH. 263 

Omit again the three following chapters, and con¬ 
tinue the record of the generations of Noah, commencing 
with the tenth chapter of Genesis, beginning, “ These are 
the generations of Noah.” Every son, offspring, or tribe 
“after his tongue , after his family, in their lands and 
nations,” and we soon come to Nimrod, a name which 
Egyptologists have deciphered for us, from the tombs of 
Egypt, and modern research proves to have been the name 
of the first great Babylon, a city of four million inhabit¬ 
ants, which had been a number of times depopulated and 
rebuilt, and was again sacked by Sargon, as related by 
Berosus, two thousand years before the Christian era. 

In this chronology of fathers begetting sons, we read 
the names of Sodom and Gomorrah, and in the same 
chapter we find explained that these are sons “ after their 
tongues, in their countries, and in their nations.” Notice, 
also, that the word “tongues,” signifying different lan¬ 
guages, occurs repeatedly in this whole genealogy, which 
is supposed to represent a period of time long prior to the 
building of the tower of Babel; at the building of which, 
if we regard the account as pure history, and not as a 
symbol, the numerous languages had their origin; in 
which light it is open to the criticism that numerous 
tongues or languages had been spoken for long prior 
ages, as related in the preceding chapters ; it must there¬ 
fore be regarded separately as a symbol, and not as 
history. 

At the close of the tenth chapter of Genesis, ending 
with Shem, omit the last verse, and commence with the 
eleventh verse of the next chapter and continue the thread 
of the chronology ; and you have the pure ancient his¬ 
toric, and perhaps the symbolic, sacred Egyptian records, 
of the long train of tribes and nations of men that far 


264 


CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE. 


back in the past inhabited the earth ; and here, in the 
eleventh chapter, commences the first migration of the 
Jews from Egypt, in the person of Abram and his fol¬ 
lowers. 

It will become apparent hereafter that the portions of 
Genesis which we have omitted, containing symbols of 
science and history; in Eve’s creation from a rib, the 
murder of Abel, Noah’s ark, the tower of Babel, etc., 
which are written in styles totally unlike the first, with 
use of the term “Lord God” commencing every verse, 
while the simple word ‘ ‘ God ” commences each verse of 
the intervening chapters, are all of them symbols like 
“the days” of the first chapter of Genesis ; they are sym¬ 
bols, locking up in terse, rounded statements, tremen¬ 
dous epochs, stupendous events, terrible catastrophes, 
and grand glories ; here are also symbols of science and 
the laws of nature, ethics, and the relation man bears to 
his creator — volumes of what is known and what is not 
yet fathomed. 

The book of Genesis is a compendium of not one but 
many authors; the dove-tailed parts, interlocking and 
joining each other, bear the stamps of not alone various 
originators, but various periods, or ages, in the past his¬ 
tory of their origin. 

That which calls forth our admiration of the Old 
Testament is the worlds of science, history, philosophy, 
and morality which leap out of its sentences, — out of its 
wondrous isolated parts,—grand utterances tied up and 
complete within themselves, like balls of yarn capable of 
infinite unfolding — jewels of truth, sparkling sometimes 
like diamonds amid rubbish, or like the stars of this 
upper sky in the darkest night of human blindness and 


sorrow. 


WISDOM OF ANTIQUITY. 


265 


The grandeur and sublimity of these shining gems of 
eternal truth, become more dazzling arrayed like lights 
against the dark wall of the unfathomable ; the sublimity 
of the picture more apparent with its mysterious and un¬ 
knowable background, with its various colors and sharp 
contrasted shadings ; the great line of argument more 
overwhelming by sudden breaks where the light ebbs 
and flows. 

The Old Testament may be said to represent the wis¬ 
dom of antiquity and the sublime manifestation of that 
inspiration which has impelled all that is noble and true 
in human thought and human life. 

It contains the accumulated religious utterances of 
a tremendous past; and the sublime symbols, meta¬ 
phors, and axioms of science are often intermingled with 
songs, incantations, and histories of dark eras and peo¬ 
ples ; who through God’s providence have preserved and 
perpetuated them, the full import of which they could not 
comprehend. 

The religious, scientific, and historic sayings and 
symbols of this book, or collection of books, — for it was 
not until after the Christian era that they were gathered 
and published together in one volume, — are older than 
lias been conceived. 

Like a rolling snow-ball, this volume of divine po¬ 
etry, inspired philosophy, written law, histories, symbols, 
and worship of truth, has accumulated, and represents 
not alone the Jews, but before them Egypt, and before 
it, bronze and stone periods, — mighty ages prior to 
floods, convulsions, and the decay of continents. 

It has rolled down through the ages of a tremen¬ 
dous past; beginning on the earliest shore of human 
aforetime; through high tides of civilization and low ; 


266 


BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 


it has rolled through the histories and seen the decay of 
grand empires ; and gone through the mire of barbarism, 
defacing its glory and leaving traces of mud. Marginal 
notes and other comments written by interpreters, com¬ 
mentators, and translators are so intermingled with its 
more sublime parts, that it is difficult, if not impossible, 
of analysis. 

But it is full of gold and rare jewels, repeating in 
us the emotions of the past, when God has whispered to 
human hearts, or spoken aloud to mighty nations, his 
everlasting law. 

Let us treasure this volume for what it claims for 
itself, that which it assumes to be, for what it is, regard¬ 
less of those who, in the enthusiasm of their admiration, 
have exalted its every iota, word, and dot to heaven, and 
thereby made it a mark of the severest ridicule. 

The Jews left Egypt with Egyptian education, hav¬ 
ing sprung in earlier times from a mixture of Hindoo and 
Asiatic stock, and when they left Egypt, under their 
leader Abram, they carried with them the remembrances 
of the religious teachings of their ancestors, the Yedas, 
and the sacred books of Egypt,— the sacred books of a 
people whose science and civilization, and the spirit utter¬ 
ances of whose religion, were the grandest the world has 
seen. 1 

Clemens of Alexandria tells us that the ancient 
Egyptians had forty-two sacred books, divided by them 
into various classes; one class consisted of songs and 


1 In like manner as ideas and observances of the more ancient oriental 
nations crop out in the Old Testament, so also, to-day, much of what is, by 
many, regarded as an essential part of the Christian religion has been bor¬ 
rowed from our ancesters, —the Druids. We retain still many of their cus¬ 
toms, forms of worship, and their sacred Sunday, with numerous other un- 


EGYPTIAN CATACOMBS AND PYRAMIDS. 



































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































* 













ANCIENT EGYPT. 


269 


psalms, another class treated of religious ceremonies; 
another class prescribed the duties of priests, and yet 
another gave laws for the people ; still others treated of 
history, science, medicine, etc.; only one of these books, 
however, has been handed down to us; it consists of 
prayers, hymns, and ordinances, a copy of which was 
found by the French at Thebes. 

The whole life of ancient Egypt took the stamp of 
religion ; their writings were so full of religious symbols 
that it could scarcely be used for any other purposes ; 
philosophy and science were merely branches of religion, 
and art labored only to glorify the gods ; forms and cere¬ 
monies were numerous and imperative, and the details of 
every-day life were regulated by it. 

The natural instinct and life of the Egyptian was to 
worship. A future life was his daily meditation ; to him 
the sun seemed to die at its setting, and when it flamed its 
beams again in the forehead of the sky, it was the symbol 
of man’s resurrection. 

Their religious and other temples were more spacious 
and grand than anything in modern times, each of which 
had a presiding body of priests. The pyramids still in 


conscious forms and ideas which existed among them prior to their conversion 
to the Christian Catholic religion. 

All the ancient oriental nations, together with the Jews and the early 
Christians, designated the days of the week by simple numbers, the Jewish 
seventh day falling on the Druid Saturday. 

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Satur¬ 
day are old Druid days, derived from the names of Druid gods, naturally 
retained from our own ancestors. 

When the Druid priests of England, Germany, France, Denmark, and 
all the eastern and northern nations began to embrace the Christian religion, 
they congregated for worship, as had been their custom, in their temples, on 
their old sacred day, — a day dedicated to the sun for sun worship, — Sunday. 


270 


CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE. 


their ruins are the marvel of mankind. The river Nile 
was diverted from its course to make a place for the city 
of Memphis. The artificial lake of Moeris, created as a 
reservoir, was four hundred and fiftv miles in circumfer- 
ence, with subterranean channels, flood-gates, locks, and 
dams. 

The temple of Karnak covered a square, each side of 
which is eighteen hundred feet. Travellers all appear to 
have been unable to find words to express the feelings 
with which these sublime remains inspired them ; courts, 
halls, gateways, pillars, obelisks, monolithic figures, 
sculptured sphinxes, are massed in such profusion that 
it is hardly possible to believe in the magnificence and 
grandeur of the ancient realities. 

The cathedral of Notre Dame at Paris could be built 
inside a single one of the halls of Karnak, and not touch 
the walls. The whole valley of the Nile from the Cata¬ 
combs to the sea, was covered with temples, palaces, 
tombs, pyramids, and pillars. 

It is hardly possible for the mind to appreciate the 
grandeur of this ancient civilization ; yet when we con¬ 
sider that our own country is as yet but a little more than 
one hundred years old, and that according to all the au¬ 
thorities, civilization in Egypt covered a period of at least 

Retaining their old sacred day as their new Sabbath, our ancestors through 
their representatives, the Druid priests, substituted, as rapidly as the old su¬ 
perstitions would admit, Christ and the new Christian religion. 

For a long time, among the people there was a great intermixture and 
conflict of the old Druidic and the new Christian ideas. 

The old symbol of the sun, represented by a hoop, was not easily sub¬ 
stituted for the new symbol of the cross ; and the early priests, in compro¬ 
mise, allowed the intermixture and blending of the two symbols ; the old 
sacred hoop, — symbol of the sun — dear to the hearts of the people, — and 
the new cross, were, for a time, combined in one. The hoop was on one side, 



ANCIENT EGYPT. 


271 


ten thousand years, the mind recognizes at once something 
solid and eternal in the principles of their religion, of 
which its systems of government and sculptured edifices 
were but the outward manifestation. 

The priesthood did not constitute an exclusive caste ; 
in addition to their religious functions, they were judges 
of provinces, military commanders, and were divided into 
various grades, such as prophets, pontiffs, scribes, etc. 

No country in the world paid women greater respect, 
or held them in higher esteem than Egypt. Monogamy 
was the rule ; not even the kings in early days were 
allowed to have more than one wife. Her function was 
the ruling of her own household ; here she taught her 
children morals, and imbued them with that religious sub¬ 
limity characteristic of the whole people. The ceremony 
of marriage embraced an oath of promised chastity and 
purity. 

In the temples flowers were placed upon the altars, 
and they were sometimes decorated with the various 
forms of vegetable life; and even the mineral kingdom 
was represented in their religious ceremonies, as so many 
varied symbols of the Divine. 


sawed through, and the two detached ends were drawn past each other, form¬ 
ing the cross. 

Even now, on Good Friday, this symbol is seen in the form of candies, 
doughnuts, and baked bread, in German and other shops. 

It is the symbol of the compromise and blending of Druidism and 
Christianity, in which Christianity gave up the old sacred seventh day, and 
conceded the Druid Sunday. 

This concession, however, of the major part of the Christian world, in 
which the old sacred seventh-day Sabbath was changed to the Druid Sunday, 
was reconciled, and made appropriate and consistent in the argument and be¬ 
lief, perhaps well grounded, that on this day of the week occurred Christ’s 
resurrection. 


272 


BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 


Like the children of Israel, who, in a lesser degree, 
copied these ancient rites, they sometimes sacrificed ani¬ 
mals, sprinkling the blood upon the altars, while incense 
was offered to the gods. 

Until the coming of Swedenborg, says Dr. Clark, 
who gave his disciples the precise measure and form of 
the life to come, no religion has ever taught an immor¬ 
tality as distinct in its outline or as solid in its substance 
as that of the ancient Egyptians. 

A king’s tomb at Thebes gives us in a few words the 
religious creed of a Pharaoh : — 

“ I lived in truth, and fed my soul with justice ; 

What I did was done in peace. I loved God, 

Gave bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, 

Clothes to the naked, and a shelter 
To the stranger. I honored the gods 
With sacrifices, and the dead with offerings.” 

At Lycopolis numerous rocks contain ancient hiero¬ 
glyphic inscriptions ; from one is deciphered the follow¬ 
ing :— 

“ I never took the child from its mother’s bosom, 

Nor the poor man from the side of his wife.” 

An inscription on a papyrus in the British Museum 
carefully interpreted, reads as follows : — 

“ God has been with me through all the temptations of life ; 

His mind inspired my own in charity and virtue.” 

There are hundreds of such stones in Egypt, covered 
with inscriptions of a high moral and religious strain, 
everywhere proclaiming justice, mercy, benevolence, kind¬ 
ness, affection, and love ; reverence for the gods ; respect 
of man, and regard of woman. After ten thousand years, 


SACRED BOOKS OF EGYPT. 


273 


will anything more sublime be deciphered from our tomb¬ 
stones ? 

From Clemens Alexandrinus we learn that the Egyp¬ 
tians had forty-two sacred books treating separately of 
poetry, songs and praise, ethics, morals, science, as¬ 
tronomy, hieroglyphics, geography, medicine, and topics 
as varied as the “ Encyclopedia Britannica.” A fragment 
of one of these books is still extant in two original copies 
on papyrus, one found by the French at Thebes, the other 
by Champallin in Turin. 

Possessing these sacred treasures of Egypt’s knowl¬ 
edge, Abram and his followers, with Moses and the chil¬ 
dren of Israel, leaving Egypt for a new and promised 
land, is it any wonder that the whole drift of their relig¬ 
ion and literature should reflect Egypt, the sea and source 
of its inspiration ? 

The great peculiarity of the Egyptian religion, and 
that which has created astonishment, was the worship of 
special objects in nature, plants, animals, sun, moon, and 
stars. Animals were, in some mysterious sense, objects 
of their profound adoration ; accordingly, we find them 
embalmed in tombs, and wrapped with delicate care ; 
also plants, from which it has been inferred in the lan¬ 
guage of Murray, u Their gods grew in gardens.” 

lleverence for plants and animals was the natural 
outgrowth of their system of religion. Pantheists, as 
were the educated priests, and pantheistic as was the 
whole fabric of their philosophy, reverence and adoration 
for “the All,” found expression in variety, and each in¬ 
dividual part symbolized the whole. 

The Egyptians regarded this universe as the outward 
manifestation of God. He was the sum total of things ; 
and existed also in his fullness in the minutest atom — the 

15 


CRITICISM OF TIIE BIBLE. 


274 

I J. 


all — embracing unity ; and the varied phenomena of nat¬ 
ure were but manifestations of the Divinity. Everything 
in a mysterious way symbolized Him ; plants and animals 
were the expression of his thoughts ; and there sprung up, 
accordingly, this peculiar worship. And it is possible 
that the people did not all comprehend the philosophy of 
the priesthood,— “unity in variety,”—and losing sight 
of “the All,” followed the outward forms and customs in 
the worship of objects, animals, plants, etc. 

“ There’s something in that ancient superstition 
Which, erring as it is, our fancy loves ; 

The spring that with its thousand crystal bubbles, 

Bursts from the bosom of some desert rock, 

In secret solitude may well be deemed 
The haunt of something purer, more refined, 

And deeper, truer, mightier than ourselves.” 

Can we, to-day, view the surrounding hills and stars, 
oceans, plains, slopes, and flowers ; animals in countless 
variety, these embodied thoughts of God ; each meaning 
something, symbolizing something — without a feeling of 
reverence and awe ? Every part of the religion of Egypt 
shows how much they w T ere attracted towards variety, 
towards nature, towards the outward manifestations of 
the Divine ; this tendency reached its culmination in the 
worship of animals. 

Forty-two commandments prescribe the duties of man 
to man, and gave the rewards of virtue. 

We know that Genesis resembles older chronological 
accounts ; we know that the story of “the fall ” was not 
original with the Hebrew nation, and that the legend 
existed in various forms before the reign of Menes in 
Egypt. 


GENESIS AND THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN BOOKS. 275 

And when we call to mind the fact that Seth was 
God's primitive name in Asia, as was Shem, that of the 
sun, long before the founding of the first Egyptian em¬ 
pire ; and that Enos is the Arabic word for “ man ” the 
same as Adamah or ha-adam in Hebrew, all meaning “ the 
man” or “race of mala,” the allegorical nature of the 
whole chronology becomes clear. 

The Egyptians had a story about the flood and ark 
ages before Abram ; that the story in Genesis is but a 
symbol or modified copy of the old one, as is also that of 
creation, Adam, the fall, the ark, and the deluge, there 
can be no doubt. It is not hard to demonstrate the alle¬ 
gorical and typical character of much that we have been 
accepting as absolutely true and exact in both profane and 
sacred history. 

The Babylonians and Chaldeans had an Adam- 
Kadma, or first man, and they had also ten epochs from 
creation to the flood, just as the Hebrew story has ten 
generations from Adam to Noah. 

The first epoch to the Chaldean historian was that of 
Alorus, and extended to the beginning of the second 
epoch. Hippolytus tells us that the Chaldeans called the 
early races of men born of the earth, but who afterwards 
became living souls, Adam. 

Beyond all reasonable doubt, “Moses, who was 
learned in all the learning of the Egyptians,” knew their 
theories of the human origin. Long before his cradle 
w r as found in the bulrushes of Rhodes by the king’s 
daughter of royal Memphis ; long before the Hebrew 
lawgiver had listened to the promptings of ambition, old 
Chaldea’s poets had sung of a “time in which nothing 
rested but black darkness, and an abyss deep of waters,” 
which fragment differs but little from the second verse of 


276 


BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 


Genesis. There is every reason to believe that the latter 
was not written till thousands of years after the former 
had been crystallized into the faith of an entire family of 
nations, dwelling in cities, scattered thickly over eastern 
Asia, and along the banks of the Euphrates. 

It is generally admitted by biblical scholars, that the 
first verse of Genesis is a preface to what follows, and 
that the first chapter properly ends at the fourth verse of 
the second chapter, which embraces one narrative of 
man’s creation ; wdiile the balance of the second chapter 
contains a totally different account, a chapter of symbols 
obtained from another source. 

Long before Menes founded Memphis, the Phenician 
sages had taught of a — 

“ Turbid chaos, and black as starless night, 

Over which swept breezes of thickened air ; ” 

and the early people of India were familiar with the cos¬ 
mogonic phraseology. Indeed, the same sublime concep¬ 
tion that has been handed down to us in Genesis, consti¬ 
tuted the starting-point of a number of oriental theories 
of creation. 

The discoveries recently being made concerning the 
books of antiquity, and also in reference to both the Old 
and the New Testament, are rapidly but surely destroying 
the letter, but preserving the spirit and soul, dispersing 
the clouds that envelope Jesus and the past, and fixing 
him and his imperial truths in flames of shining light, so 
that all can see their glowing beauties, and every thirsty 
soul drink at the fountains of living water. 

It was in Egypt that Jesus spent the greater part of 
his boyhood and probably his early manhood, receiving 
and reflecting divine wisdom, coming down from the 
antiquities. 


MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN PRIEST. 


277 


O sacred people! your monuments still lift their 
heads to heaven, and the wellspring of your oracles, with 
the inspired utterances of your philosophy, still leavens 
the civilizations of the world, still flows in human history 
and in human hearts ! 

Herodotus tells us that the word “Palistu” is 
written on a monument in Karnak in Egypt, and is also 
found in Nineveh ; this is undoubtedly the origin of the 
word Philistine,” or “Palistine,” and gives us the key 
to the origin and migration of the Jews . 1 

Moses is purely an Egyptian name; he was reared 
by the daughter of Pharaoh in the household of a king; 
was himself an Egyptian priest, which capacity he filled 
until the age of forty-three, the student and teacher of 
Egypt’s education, — when among its monuments clus¬ 
tered the grandest art and science in the history of the 
world. 

It was to Egypt that Greek and Roman scholars went 
for instruction ; here Pythagoras, Herodotus, and Plato 
caught the spirit of their profound philosophy, and became 
imbued with the religious sublimity which made the monu¬ 
ments of their lives, and through which these men shine 
out from the night of Greece, like beacon lights from 
the darkness of that era of philosophic infidelity and 
selfishness. 

Moses knew all that Egypt could teach, and he per¬ 
petuated the old Egyptian rites and ceremonies. We 
must therefore look for the well-spring of that great 
divinity which underlies the Old Testament, breathing 
in its philosophy, its oracles, its poetry, back to a time 
earlier than has been conceived. 


1 In the ancient history of Hindostan we find also a branch called 


“ Filistines.” 


278 


CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE. 


During the wanderings of the Jews in the wilderness, 
and we might add, the general down-fall and corruption of 
this people, it was natural for them to create arguments 
for the justification of their acts ; and amid the sublime 
sayings of their patriarchs and prophets, we see cropping 
out even a defense for their crimes ; yes, like Mohamme¬ 
danism, wholesale human massacres were perpetuated by 
devilish inspirations as they affirm from God. 

The Jews came to believe that they were created by 
an especial fiat of God, that they were his chosen people, 
and that all other races of men had sprung from their out¬ 
casts ; hence the story of the vagabond Cain, who fled to 
another country, finally getting married, settling down, 
and founding a city,— a story which, if taken in the strict 
letter of its wording, becomes contradictory, untenable, 
and absurd ; if regarded, however, among symbols, as 
a symbol, we shall yet show that it flashes forth a mean¬ 
ing of the deepest import. 

This story is contained, however, in the Hindoo 
Vedas ; which, by the w T ay, is, without doubt, the original 
religious book of the Jews, prior to the time when taken 
from Asia or Hindostan into Egypt, as slaves ; and by a 
long course of generations amalgamated with Egyptian 
stock. And it is reasonable to suppose that although 
reared and educated in Egypt, they still adhered, in a 
considerable measure, to the teachings of their ancestors ; 
hence the many sayings in the Bible seemingly borrowed 
from the Hindoo Vedas. 

Let it not be supposed, however, that the ancient 
Hindoo Vedas is a heathen book ; well might modern 
nations study the ancient literature of this once mighty 
people, and pattern after her civilization, as indicated in 


ANCIENT HINDOSTAN. 


279 


the sublime precepts of this ancient Vedas ; also in the 
ruins of her sculptured cities, sometimes rivaling, if not 
surpassing, the stupendous works of Egypt. 

Indeed, were it not for the fact that extensive ruins 
still exist in Hindostan and other India, the accounts of 
others which have disappeared, having succumbed to the 
ravages of time and the fury of the bigoted Mussulman, 
would sound, in our ears, as incredible as the story of 
“Parnassu’s tomb, which overtopped old Pelian, and 
made Ossa like a wart.” 

u On the banks of the Ganges stand to-day the ruins of 
the ancient city Benares. The great temple Bendh Madhu 
was demolished in the seventeenth century. The body of 
this magnificent temple was constructed in the figure of a 
colossal cross, with a lofty dome at the center, above 
which rose a massive structure ; at the four extremities 
of the cross there were other temples, of proportionate 
dimensions . 11 

Similar ruins are found on the banks of the Jura, in¬ 
cluding the subterranean temple at Elephanta, whose 
sculptured halls and columns in all their massive propor¬ 
tions and grandeur, were hewn from solid rock. Maurice 
describes at length the massive ruins and still standing 
columns of the mighty Indian cities which point back to 
their once high civilization. 

Is it not worth our time to examine the sacred books 
of this once great people ? for it cannot be questioned that 
many of the sayings of the Old Testament are but ver¬ 
batim copies from the Vedas. 

Among its precepts, science, philosophy, and poetry 
we find a sublimity only equaled by the Old Testament 
itself. 


280 


BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 


From this Vedas we select the following sentences, 
which will serve to illustrate the general character of this 
ancient Hindoo bible : — 

“As the earth yields its fruit to those who rend 
Its bosom with a plow, so return good for evil.” 

“Consider the supreme omniscient Intelligence, 

The sovereign Lord of the universe, by whom 
Alone it exists ; an incomprehensible Spirit 
Pervading all beings, and causing them to pass 
Through birth and death like the wheels of a car.” 

“The fruit of every virtuous act which thou hast done, 

O good man, since thy birth, shall depart from thee 
To the dogs, if thou deviate from the truth.” 

“The man who perceives in himself the Supreme soul, 
Present in all creatures, acquires equanimity 
Towards them all, and shall be absolved 
At last into the essence of the Almighty.” 

“A true and faithful wife who wishes to attain 
In heaven the measure of her husband, must do 
Nothing unjust to him, or unkind to others.” 

“ Forgive injuries. Never neglect your duty ; 

Be liberal. Let your meditations be pure, 

And purge yourselves from secret, sinful thoughts.” 

The Vedas is overflowing with sentences of the lofti¬ 
est import, which we have not space further to examine. 

From these grand sources, Egypt and India, came 
the hereditary education, as well as the blood and sinew 
itself, of the Jews. They combined these influences in 
the formation of a religious tendency, while slaves in 
Egypt. 

From India and Egypt as the hereditary cradle and 
school of Abraham, Moses, and the Jews, came that lofty 
inspiration which after they had left Egypt while wander¬ 
ing in the wilderness, culminated in the Old Testament. 

From Egypt and India came their code of law, their 
cabernacles and their sacrifices, their circumcisions and 


ANTIQUITY OF THE BIBLE. 


281 


their commandments, their symbols of the creation, their 
traditions of men and races, their legends of floods, of 
Edenic gardens, the flaming sword, and fall of man. 

And in this we find the explanation of older utter¬ 
ances, embodied in the Old Testament, handed down to 
us from crumbling nations and forgotten peoples, pre¬ 
served from sinking continents, floods, and fires, coming 
down from the very threshold of the human era. 

The truths of the Old Testament,— the divine inspira¬ 
tions to the children of men in all the ages of the mighty 
past,—together with the psalms and songs of the Jewish 
patriarchs and prophets, are not hurt nor soiled, though 
mixed and mingled with the ecstatic utterances of men, 
which not even the subservient authors from higher 
powers, in the depth and degree of their inspirations, 
could distinguish from that which emanated from puerile 
human faculties. 

The sublime inspirations from higher intelligences, 
through the Jewish patriarchs and prophets, retard not 
the glory of their shining, even though interwoven with 
the full profane history of the Jews, in its dark burden of 
wars, its aggregated load of vice and crime, wherein kings 
and princes have defended wholesale massacres, pluralities 
of wives, harems of concubines, human slavery, and the 
foulest and blackest crimes. 

The truths of this sublime Bible stand the test of all 
the ages, and become grander in the light of science ; 
while many of its sayings when construed literally are so 
seemingly the product of erring human faculties, of bar¬ 
baric invention, that Yoltaires, Paines, and Ingersolls 
keep their audiences laughing at the absurdity of talking 
animals, snakes manufactured from canes, the stomach of 
whales transformed into palace-cars, and the supreme 
God of this universe sitting in the cool of shade trees,— 


282 


CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE. 


such is the natural outgrowth of the “plenary inspira¬ 
tion theory ” to those who cannot understand the use of 
metaphors, comparisons, illustrations, symbols, allegories, 
and the word paintings and poetry of human language, 
when dealing with subjects beyond the dictionary of 
human terms, and the easy comprehension of finite 
thought. 

Construed as a story in its literal sense, is it a won¬ 
der that infidels have said, “That little ark would not 
hold hay enough to feed the elephants”? but taking the 
account as a symbol, it locks up in a few sentences the 
whole history of the deluge, in a way that even heathen 
ages have repeated and perpetuated the story,— a story 
so constructed that it stands the test of enlightened 
science, symbolizing the most terrible event the earth has 
seen, with the ark of safety for the escaping few,— a 
symbol worthy of an inspired hand. 

So also of the story of the building of the tower of 
Babel and the confounding of tongues ; if considered as 
exact history, it is open to the criticism that the person 
who wrote it and put it into the eleventh chapter of Gen¬ 
esis, did not even stop to read the chapter, else he would 
have put it in sooner, or torn out the preceding sentences 
in which the word “ tongues ” repeatedly occurs, and in 
which we are told of Adam, Noah, etc.: these are genera¬ 
tions of sons and daughters, not in the sense of single 
persons, but — 

“ After their tongues, in their 
Lands, and in their nations.” 

When we regard the story of the building of the 
tower of Babel with its confounding of tongues as a 
symbol of the building of all ancient pyramids and the 
derivation of all languages, it becomes grand in the ex- 



A People of Forty Thousand Years Ago, Building the Pyramids of Mexico. 

[ 283 ] 


















































































































































THE FLOOD AND THE TOWER OF BABEL. 


2S5 


treme. So also of the names “ Adam,” “ Cain,” “Abel,” 
“Methuselah,” “Noah,” etc.— symbols meaning tribes, 
races, or nations, “after their tongues, in their lands, 
and in their nations.” 

Had we the complete, sacred, ancient Egyptian and 
Hindoo records, we would have a history of the great 
Hood, concerning which the priests of Egypt told Solon, 
the learned Greek, three hundred years before the Chris¬ 
tian era ; a full account of which they said was in their 
records, concerning the continent of Atlantis, sunk in the 
Atlantic Ocean, with islands larger than and as densely 
populated as Great Britain. 

Ships sent out by the American and English govern¬ 
ments have dragged the Atlantic Ocean, and found evi¬ 
dence to verifv what had been regarded as Grecian 
fables, concerning Egyptian records that described great 
and powerful continents, which in early times existed in 
the East, and which were lost forever in a terrible flood. 

Donnelly attempts to prove in his “Atlantis” that 
these sunken islands distributed the colonies of Egypt, 
China, Mexico, and early Britain, and thus explains the 
sameness of monuments, hieroglyphics, and bronze imple¬ 
ments, preserved from the antiquities of these countries. 

We read that Noah begat sons and daughters (prob¬ 
ably a symbol of the colonies that went out from the 
fatherland), and that in his five hundredth year, there 
came a disastrous flood. 

But the records which the Egyptians had preserved 
from the earliest times were modified, condensed, and 
crystallized by the Jews into symbols ; therefore in Gen¬ 
esis we have rounded stories,— almost single sentences,— 
standing in the place of forgotten volumes. 

•Instead of lengthy and elaborate histories relating 
how certain nations escaped the ingulfing maelstrom, 


^86 


BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 


thereby perpetuating tongues and tribes, we have it all in 
the condensed symbol of Noah and the ark. And in the 
place of a long, labored history pertaining to the builders 
of the various ancient mounds and pyramids of the earth, 
we have it all condensed in the symbol of the building of 
the tower of Babel and the confounding of tongues. In 
the nineteenth chapter of this book we have likewise 
symbolized the whole history of the planet Mars, with an 
Adamah and ark. 

The simplified symbols of the Old Testament to-day 
stand out as the embodiment of great historic, scientific, 
and moral truths, becoming more grand under the test of 
modern research and the lamp of the nineteenth-century 
science. 

The same divinity that was in the chaos of the early 
creation, and moved onward by slow steps to the order 
and beauty of our system, has been in the chaos of the 
material evolving symbols from the libraries of long for¬ 
gotten ages, in the unconscious writings of patriarchs and 
prophets, producing the wonderful pages of the Bible. 
These earlier, ancient, lost libraries, from which the 
Jewish patriarchs and prophets drank wisdom, are re¬ 
ferred to, by them, in various ways, u As it is written ; ” 
u It is w r ritten ; ” “ Is not this written in the book of the 
wars of the Lord?” “As it is written in the book of 
Jasher,” etc. 

Let us, in profound reverence, build comparative 
symbols from pagan history. 

In the beginning God created man, and called his 
name Egypt; and these are the generations of Egypt, 
after their tongues, in their lands and nations, in the day 
that God created him ; male and female created he them. 

And Egypt knew his wife ; and she conceived and 
bare Phenicia, Etruria, and Greece; and the days of 


A BOOK OF SYMBOLS. 


287 


Egypt after he begat Greece, were sixteen hundred years ; 
and all the days of Egypt were ten thousand years ; and 
he died. 

And Greece begat Persia and Rome; and when 
Greece was seven hundred years old, he died. 

And Rome begat Britain, Austria, and France ; and 
Rome lived three hundred years after he begat Britain ; 
and all the days of Rome were eight hundred and ninety- 
nine years, and he died. 

Britain begat America, France begat Canada, and 
Austria slew his brother Poland. 

Similar symbols, constituting Genesis, we have of 
the ancient world ; of times and things prior to the flood. 
There is a world of condensed, crystallized meaning, in 
its every word. Symbols representing volumes of unwrit¬ 
ten history, science, philosophy, and law. 

We have found the key which has unlocked the 
meaning of numerous symbols pertaining to the creation. 

“Days”— symbols of immeasurable ages, epochs of 
stupendous changes, “ way-marks ” of that eternity which 
evolved the world from chaos. 

“Adam,” “Seth,” “Enos,” “Methuselah,” “Noah,” 
“Shem,” “Ham,” etc., are all symbols, meaning epochs 
of the human family, nations, multitudes, races, tongues. 

Plants and animals “created before they grew,” is a 
symbol of the Divine plan, tied up in the cosmos of the 
dawning creation, prior to the sun. 

The birth of Eve from “Adam’s rib ” is a symbol of 
the Divine plan, of the reproduction and propagation of 
all life. 

“The serpent and forbidden tree ” is a symbol of the 
temptations, vice, and crime in the human family. 

The slaying of Abel by his brother Cain is a symbol 
of the map and record of all the wars. 


288 


CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE. 


The ark of Noah is a symbol of the earth’s axial 
changes ; and the escape of parts of the world from the 
flood, when Atlantis sunk beneath the sea. 

“The tower of Babel ” is a symbol of the building of 
the pyramids, of all the ruins of the past, and the deriva¬ 
tion of all languages. 

“The flaming sword’' is a symbol of all comets; 
and the comet in particular which destroyed the Edenic 
world. 

“The seed of the woman bruising the serpent’s 
head ” is a symbol of the Christian religion, and a mil¬ 
lennium of righteousness yet to come. 

There is tied up, here, in the Old Testament, “books 
which the world itself could not contain ; ” every sentence 
is an encyclopedia, every word a stupendous volume. 

The divine mind of man will yet learn to read its 
wonderful import, and drink wisdom and righteousness 
from the inexhaustible fountain. 

Explain to me, infidels, who deny providence, the 
wonders tied up in these ancient sentences. I call upon 
you, Voltaire, Paine, and Ingersoll, to explain to me how 
the ancients gave utterance to such wonderful thought and 
science, and how and why, at various periods of the 
world, savages have preserved and perpetuated them. 
Should you ask me for an explanation, I should reply, in 
the language of others, 

“Human nature rests on a greater reality ; 

In God we live, move, and have our being ; 

There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration 
Of the Almighty giveth them understanding.” 

The sublime truths of the Bible ; its music and its 
poetry, its psalms and songs, are the songs arid psalms 
which the spheres still sing. Its written oracles are a re- 


BOOK OF BOOKS. 


289 


flection from the oracles written on the stars ; and the 
utterances, penned in its sublime sentences, are still 
echoed from the great heart of humanity. 

I do not wish to be understood, from anything in 
this chapter pertaining to periods of superstition, through 
which the sayings of the Bible have rolled, as desiring to 
reject books, or any portion of these books, modified as 
they have been. A providence has mixed these symbols 
and sublime sayings with shadow, and made them grand 
by contrast. 

The first impulse of the admirer is to tear away the 
snakes from Michael Angelo’s painted beauty ; but what 
power of sublimity, the mixture of darkness may give to 
the Bible, I know not. 

The stars shine only in the night; light flashes forth 
brilliancy alone in darkness ; man is yet too puny to 
fathom the mysteries of Providence. What suns and 
symbols may yet leap forth from the now unmeaning por¬ 
tions of the Bible, time alone can tell. 

Let it stand in one bound volume, the monument of 
wonder, the stimulus to study, the leaven of all human 
development. 

Prophets have been among us; hands that penned 
And tongues that uttered wisdom, Isaiah, Job, 

Samuel, Ezekiel, Daniel, David ; 

Great moralists, to act and comprehend ; 

They knew how genuine glory was put on 
Through worship and close commune with God 
Foreshadowed enlightment and all our splendor ; 

Our time, ’t is strange, hath brought forth nonesuch. 
Perpetual emptiness ! unceasing change ! 

No single volume paramount, no code, 

No master spirits, of law and prophecy ; 

But equally a want of books and men ! 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


CRITICISM OF HISTORY —AGE OF LETTERS — MORNING OF HU¬ 
MANITY’S MANHOOD —FORTY THOUSAND YEARS. 

The Chinese records tell of events that occurred 
among their ancestors one hundred and twenty-nine thou¬ 
sand years ago ; their records of government, still pre¬ 
served in their libraries, cover a period of eight thousand 
years; and they claim to possess fragmentary records of 
government sixty-tliree thousand years old. A Chinese 
work, written two thousand years before Christ, deals 
with the antiquities, and advocates the adoption of the 
ancient systems of education. 

Whatever reply we make to these strange statements, 
one fact is certain, that China has sat, with her five hun¬ 
dred millions of people, within her two hundred million 
square miles of territory, in her cities, her monuments, 
her arts and sciences, the serene spectator of the birth 
and death of Greece ; she has seen the beginning and 
crumbling of both imperial and republican Rome ; she 
has seen dynasties, kingdoms, republics, revolutions ; she 
has laughed as nations have come and gone, like bubbles 
bursting in air ; she has looked on at the surging sea of 
wars, and the shifting map of humanity. 

She has seen a modern Christ, coming in the night 
of a modern Jerusalem, radiant with glory, and profound 
with divine philosophy, standing in Galilee and teaching 
[ 290 ] 


ANTIQUITY OF CHINA. 


291 


the same sublime doctrine respecting man’s duty to man 
that her Confucius had taught eight hundred years before. 

She looked on as a modern Moses ascended the 
steeps of Mount Sinai, enshrouded in clouds and dark¬ 
ness, and caught from the secret hand of divine inspira¬ 
tion a plate of commandments, deep graven in stone ; 
the same in number, and in the same identical phraseol¬ 
ogy, written on all her altars, and breathed from the 
antiquity of her religion. There lies back of -us, in the 
mighty shadows of past races of men, not alone a great 
antiquity, but a great Divinity. 

The Persians in their “ Old Avesta,” or 41 Twenty-one 
Nosks,” tell us such strange and earnest stories that we 
are compelled to listen if not believe ; these ancient books 
are certainly older than the writings of Moses ; with them 
time has been divided into great circles, in which there 
has existed a class of progressive beings. These books 
give a history of tribes and races, covering a period of 
hundreds of thousands of years. 

In Japan we hear things even more astounding ; 
their annals give detailed records of a line of kings reach¬ 
ing back seventeen thousand years ; they place the hypo¬ 
thetical origin of man at a period three hundred thousand 
years ago. 

In Hindostan time is divided by great circles, the 
last of which is called the “ Satya Yug,“ which is now 
elapsing : at its commencement lived one of their ances¬ 
tors hundreds of thousands of years ago. 

The Buddhistic circle of chronology, according to 
the sacred books of the mendicants’ order, is called a 
“ Sankya; ” the square of which is called an u Anta 
Kalpa,” representing a period of time reaching into the 

infinite past ; at the beginning of which, we are told, 

13 


292 


CRITICISM OF HISTORY. 


the first Buddha began to preach. To-day there are mill¬ 
ions on this earth who believe these whole chronological 
systems. 

Said Ali Mustapha, a Moslem, to me : “You laugh at 
our Kurds, and tell us impossible stories of five hundred 
distinct races of men, springing from a single pair, six 
thousand years ago ; this is too absurd for reasoning con¬ 
templation. The one hundred and twelfth chapter of the 
Koran tells us that God never begat nor was begotten. I 
do not know, but I feel that God is a being too vast for 
human contemplation. I believe that this earth has been, 
for hundreds of thousands of years, the scene of human 
activities ; I believe that time has moved in circles, each 
producing an ascending order of beings ; we are but the 
initial type of glorious races yet to come. You and my¬ 
self were present when I translated for you the sublime 
cosmogonies of Syria ; they spoke of five ages before the 
present order of men ; these five ages of fanciful beings 
are the recollections of human aforetime, stretching back 
into the dim vista of your geologic ages. Men, and races 
of men, move like the seasons, in circles ; and each round 
of ages is but a repetition on a grander scale. Look at 
yonder moon ; it rises, fulls, comes up, and goes down 
again ; so man and nations; they rise, have a period of 
advance, reach a perihelion splendor, and then a night, 
and then a new day. But come, let us light our pipes ; 
philosophy is tiresome.” 

The Hindoos have astronomical records, giving dates 
of conjunctions and eclipses of the sun and moon which 
occurred thirty thousand years ago. Nor can these facts 
be explained on the theory of back reckonings ; they 
have had no motive to invent falsehoods for posterity ; 
nor could they, if they would. Hindostan, like China, 



ANCIENT HINDOO CALCULATING THE CONJUNCTIONS 


[ -293 ] 






















































































































































































































































. 








































BABYLON-RUINS-PYRAMIDS 


ANTIQUITY. 


295 


is old with years, and but the shadow of that civilization 
and science which once were theirs. 

Thus it is that the traditional and religious weight of 
evidence gives to man a vast antiquity. 

The name of the first dynasty of Babylon was Nim¬ 
rod. Berossos gives the names of eighty-seven kings of 
a still later dynasty, at the close of which time Babylon 
was sacked by Sargon, two thousand two hundred and 
eighty-four years before Christ; this is the data which has 
been assigned, by Bible commentators, to the beginning 
of Babylon ; multiply this data by ten, and you will 
hardly have reached the beginning of that stupendous 
human hive. 

Babylon was a city of four million inhabitants, occu¬ 
pying the space of two hundred square miles, or nearly 
five times the size of the present city of London. She 
was the great center of a belt of nations ; and cities, con¬ 
nected with her in commerce, were strewn over the table¬ 
lands of Asia — cities and nations that have fallen into 
forgetfulness, buried in sands or washed by present seas. 

The monuments of Egypt, the oldest of which are 
the pyramids,— wonders even in Egypt,—have left no 
representative behind them ; there they stand, the silent 
orators of dead ages ; as said the great Napoleon to his 
army, “looking down from unknown centuries.” 

The people who built the obelisks in Egypt, and cov¬ 
ered them with hieroglyphics ; who wrapped the mum¬ 
mies, embalming them with the greatest care, knew no 
more about the pyramid builders than we do to-day. 

These majestic, voiceless sentinels,— the pyramids,— 
with heads uncovered, lifted heavenward, viewing the 
ages, stood there on the broad plain, with no spokesman 
to introduce their names, explain their origin, or tell their 


296 


CRITICISM OF HISTORY. 


motives ; there they stood silent and dumb, when Egyp¬ 
tian civilization began ; and not until recently has science 
deciphered for them a story. 

Admitting that modern research is deciphering the 
story of u Cheops’" and “Cephron,” 

“Who reared to heaven their giant sepulchers/’ 

who shall touch the wand of science, and compel the giant 
mound of Ohio, lately discovered to be a broken and 
partially-crumbled pyramid, upon which mountain the 
grasses have trespassed and foliage waves ? or who shall 
tell the story of the giant pyramid which rears its lofty 
form from the dismal cypress swamp of Florida ? or who 
shall compel the pyramids of Mexico and Central America 
to give us back the history of races and tongues, whose 
only evidence are the crumbled rocks of their ancient 
tombs ? 

The rock sides of the deep gorges and high canyons 
of the Colorado valleys are literally cut full of dwellings 
of some ancient people. The Mancos River flows through 
a veritable city of ruins, and all the diverging canyons 
are honeycombed with rooms and halls, chiseled out of 
the solid granite, connected by entrance ways, and lead¬ 
ing to central amphitheaters. Time and the elements 
have defaced the symmetrical beauty and polish, leaving 
only the architectural outlines of these ancient edifices, 
majestic still in their ruins. Here in these halls and 
rock amphitheaters, standing on the debris of ages, be¬ 
neath w r hich is entombed to-day their skulls and skeletons, 
with trophies of their handiwork, one can almost hear the 
orotund voices of orators, speaking in a language dead 
and lost, of the antiquities,— of the tremendous chasms 
of time that have rolled into the ages, since they w r ere. 


PERUVIAN AND MEXICAN RUINS. 


297 


And what shall we say of the rains of ancient public 
roads in Peru, some of them two thousand miles long, 
cut through hills, and made so thoroughly as to elicit the 
astonishment of the Spaniards? Humboldt pronounced 
them among the most stupendous works ever executed by 
man. One of these ancient roads is located fifty miles 
northwest of Magdelena. It consists of solid masonry, 
winding around and terracing a mountain two thousand 
feet high, portions of the rock sides of the mountain hav¬ 
ing been hewed down to form the road. At the base of 
the mountain is a hewn rock, weighing two hundred 
tons, placed at the mouth of what appears to be a hidden 
entrance, perhaps leading to the shrine of the ancient 
vestal virgin who kept eternal watch on the sacred fire 
which was never suffered to die. 

There are in Mexico to-day the ruins of their ancient 
magnificent bridges, of hewn stone, with suspended gate¬ 
ways. Pyramids are found almost everywhere in Mex¬ 
ico ; Cortez states that he counted four hundred of them 
at Cholula, one of which is over two hundred feet high, 
and covers an area of eleven acres ; while scattered sur¬ 
rounding ruins are covered with hieroglyphics, similar in 
kind to those of ancient Egypt. 

From the ancient Egyptian “ Book of the Dead,” 
wrested from the grasp of entombed mummies, which 
science has learned to read, Bunson establishes clearly 
that civilization in Egypt covered a period of thirty thou¬ 
sand years . 1 


1 For confirmation of the data of this chapter, see “ Prehistoric Man,” 
“Preadamites,” “ Clark’s Religious ; ” “Herodotus’ Egypt;” Fossils of the 
British Museum ; Smithsonian reports ; “ Genesis of Man ; ” Volney’s 

“ Ruins ; ” Egyptian records ; Muller’s “ Chips ; ” Donnelly’s “ Atlantis ; ” 
“The Papal Voe ; ” “The Bible in India;” “Rise and Fall of Rome ; ” 


298 


CRITICISM OF HISTORY 


And what means the symbol of a cross scattered 
everywhere in the ruins of this ancient Egyptian art ? 
Wherefore come the pictures and sculptured stone statu¬ 
ary of a man nailed upon a cross, a crown of thorns upon 
his head, and a reed in his hand ? 

Explain to me, you churches of a new-found, modern 
god, the import and meaning of these symbols reflected 
out from the night of the oldest antiquity ? 

Should you ask me for an explanation, I should re¬ 
ply that man is not the author of his own existence ; we 
rest on a greater reality. 

“ In God we live, move, and have our being ; ” 

and the march of history is the shadow of divinity. His 
hand has molded all the ages. The voice of his children, 
in mighty millions, crying to him in darkness and igno¬ 
rance, in mystic symbols and rude carvings of stone gods, 
clashing metals, beating drums, and loud ringing orgies; 
around fetish fires or curling smoke of sacrifice, in unfath¬ 
omed desires, in the secret breathings of wishes, in unut¬ 
tered prayers for light, has found responses in the all- 
pervading soul of things; and God has sent to the ages 
prophets. He has repeated himself in history ; he has 
filled the vacuum, according to his eternal principles of 
justice and mercy. 

Even as man was prophesied in the whole order of 
progressive beings, ascending step by step through the 
geologic ages, approaching nearer and nearer to him in 

Murray’s “Mythologies “Prehistoric Nations Ancient history ; Hum¬ 
boldt’s “Cosmos;” “Ancient America;” Josephus; Lewie’s “History of 
Philosophy ; ” Bancroft; Prescott ; Borosus ; Gibbon ; Tacitus ; Renan ; 
Strous ; “Encyclopedia Britannica,” and Appleton’s and Chambers’s encyclo¬ 
pedias. 


ANCIENT SYMBOLS OF A CROSS. 


299 


contour, until he himself appeared, so Christ was prophe¬ 
sied through all the ages and epochs of human history, 
profane as well as sacred. And the omens and shadows 
become plainer and clearer in each advancing age, until 
his advent makes the mysterious forebodings intelligible. 

The following is an extract, inserted from memory , 1 
as translated from some ancient Latin work, when a stu¬ 
dent in Harvard College, representing a scene enacted in 
Athens five hundred years before the Christian era, in 
which the hero, nailed to a cross, gives utterance to the 
following, his dying language : — 

“See what, a god, I suffer from the gods ! For mercy 
To mankind, I am not deemed worthy of mercy, 

But in this uncouth appointment am fixed here 
A spectacle dishonorable to Jove. On the throne 
Of Heaven scarce was he seated, then on its varied 
Powers he showered his beneficence ; but for unhappy 
Mortals had no regard, and all the present race 
Doomed to extirpate and form anew. None dared 
Oppose his will; I dared, and nobly pleading. 

Saved them from destruction. Saved them from sinking 

To the realms of night, for which offense I bow 

Beneath these chains, dreadful to suffer, piteous to behold.” 

When Solon, the learned Greek, was at Sais in 
Egypt, the Egyptian priests told him they could show 


1 The quotations of this book, both poetry and Biblical, are invariably 
inserted from memory. The author has, however, looked up and verified 
Bible quotations. It may interest some to know that the author can repeat 
verbatim the whole of Milton’s “ Paradise Lost,” Young’s “ Night Thoughts ” 
and his “Judgment Day,” Pope’s “Essay on Man,” Goldsmith’s “Deserted 
Village,” Longfellow’s “Hiawatha,” together with numerous other poems 
from the same authors, and extensive portions from Homer, Virgil, Tasso, 
Dante, Byron, Moore, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Cowper, Shelly, Tupper, Bry¬ 
ant, and numerous other poets. The author still treasures a Bible about four 
inches square which might have cost fifty cents, presented to him when a boy, 
as a reward for repeating, verbatim, the entire New Testament. 


300 


CRITICISM OF HISTORY. 


authentic names of his ancestors who lived nine thousand 
years before that date ; this conversation occurred six 
hundred and nineteen years before Christ. 

The priests of Egypt not only told Solon that their 
sacred books contained a record of their own country for 
eight thousand years, but also of Greece. They told him 
of a disastrous flood which had at one time swept the 
entire land of Greece, in which catastrophe whole conti¬ 
nents were completely destroyed. 

We will here quote verbatim from Plato’s “Dia¬ 
logues,’ 1 in the words of the Egyptian priests, as related 
by and addressing the Greek Solon : “ Our records state 
that your country [Greece] once checked the advance of a 
mighty power which threatened all Europe and Asia, 
bursting in upon them from the East; for at that time, 
beyond the pillars of Hercules there were islands larger 
than Liberia and Asia put together ; and on these islands 
a powerful kingdom, which attempted to subjugate your 
country, O Greek, and ours. Then your country rose up, 
drove back the aggressors, and erected columns to com¬ 
memorate the victory ; but mighty earthquakes followed 
in one fatal night, and sunk your great army, with the 
entire isles of the Atlantis into the sea.” “Timseus,” 
Vol. 2, p. 517. 

It is a fact that the traditions and religions of each 
and all races of mankind, savage and civilized, point 
back to a deluge, or great catastrophe, which befell this 
earth, in times so remote that I dare not attempt even 
an approximate guess in figures ; I have reached the 
conclusion that once upon a time there occurred a tre¬ 
mendous event in the history of the inhabited globe ; that 
the earth reached the intensity of an impossible ellipse, 
lost her axial balance, and formed new centers of motion. 


301 


job’s description of the flood. 

Job understood, thoroughly, the philosophy of the 
event; his own kingdom was in part destroyed, and the 
colonies he had planted sunk into the sea; buildings 
crumbled over the heads of their inmates, and fire fell 
from heaven. Job describes this event in the following 
language : — 

“He causeth a mighty wind to blow, 

He treadeth upon the waves of the sea, 

He overturneth mountains in his anger, 

He shaketh the earth out of her place.” 

The climatic conditions of his country were changed, 
and the remnant of his people no longer prospered ; thou¬ 
sands died of famine, fever, and boils. The atmospheric 
changes were so radical that vegetable, as well as animal, 
life, was affected by it. 

“He taketh away the hedge from the house.” 

After a time, however, the remnant became acclimated, 
and Job again began to prosper. 

The glacial epoch followed in North America ; cen¬ 
trifugal force hurried the waters from the old equator to 
the new, and unbalanced the internal fires ; and earth¬ 
quakes rent the yielding crust of the earth to and fro; 
many of the old continents sunk into the ocean, to rise no 
more ; the great Atlantic continent was buried beneath 
the sea ; civilization and cities went out in a night; the 
great Saharan lake of Africa, was drained ; the American 
continent, with its broad load of arctic ice, was in part 
upheaved ; the British Isles riven from Continental Eu¬ 
rope ; the region of the Atlas and of the Soudan cast up 
from briny depths ; Japan was torn from China, and the 
Greek archipelago brought into being ; Greenland, Siberia, 


302 


CRITICISM OF HISTORY. 


and the present Arctic Circle, with its tropical vegetation 
and tropical mastodons, were overtaken in the blast of a 
sudden winter, and stiffening into ice, have been pre¬ 
served until this day. 

Men and animals in countless millions perished on 
the earth, and all nature wore a new aspect. Those alone 
escaped who occupied favorable localities, where crossed 
the old and the new temperate and tropical belts ; here on 
high table-lands, above the surging tidal waves, life was 
preserved in spite of the terrible earthquake and flood. 

Prior to the great catastrophe, Salt Lake, in the 
State of Utah, was at the north pole of the earth, and the 
United States of America were then in the ice-covered 
arctic regions. The old north temperate belt encircled 
nearly the continent of North America, commencing in 
Bolivia and Mexico across the continents now sunk in the 
Atlantic Ocean, through Europe, Northern Siberia, Green¬ 
land, the present arctic regions, and Alaska, through the 
Pacific Ocean to the place of its beginning. 

The old equator encircled the earth from a point 
commencing in the south of South America, through 
Africa, Asia, Russia, Western Siberia, through the Pa¬ 
cific Ocean to the place of its beginning. 

Egypt, China, Hindostan, and the present south 
antarctic regions, were before the flood in the south tem¬ 
perate zone, near the equator. It is probable that the 
torrid zone, and the earth, as a whole, were cooler then 
than now, the earth at that time pursuing a circle more 
remote from the sun than at present; and it appears, from 
Cyclopean and other ancient ruins in South America 
and other parts of the world, that the highest civilizations 
were almost all in, or near, the old torrid zone. 


WHEN CHEOPS AND CEPHRON REARED TO HEAVEN THEIR GIANT SEPULCHERS. [303] 





























































































































































































































































































































































































































. 









































































































. 





MAP OF THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. 


305 


The old south pole and south Antarctic Circle were in 
the Oceanic Islands. 

Australia and North America are continents, there¬ 
fore, to recover comparatively recently, from an arctic, ice, 
or glacial period, and from the evaporating or receding 
salt seas. Our broad prairies and young forests, with a 
surface stratum full of the petrified remains of sea-shells 
and fishes ; with salt beds and alkaline plains, precipitated 
from salt water by the process of freezing, point back to 
recent salt seas which covered these continents, and the 
early overlying strata of ice. 

With the sudden change in the polar position and 
axial motion of the earth, the earth assumed a position 
nearer the sun, which now shines down with a new vitaliz¬ 
ing power, calling forth a higher civilization, and devel¬ 
oping in the brain and heart of man grander, purer 
faculties. 

Thus with the play of elements, the wreck of conti¬ 
nents, the ebb and flow of civilizations and of nations, is 
it any wonder that the early history of our race is shrouded 
in obscurity ? that the early race of Adam, which the first 
and fifth chapters of Genesis tell us plainly, constituted a 
mighty people, which inhabited the globe for nine hun¬ 
dred and thirty years, far back in the night of an immense 
antiquity,— that even the import of the records, handed 
down to us through the people of the pyramids, has been 
mistaken and forgotten, and dark ages of ignorance trans¬ 
formed the history of this ancient race into a man Adam, 
and created for him, in times of yesterday, a companion 
from a rib ? 

There is an antiquity which had grown gray and ven¬ 
erable before antiquity began. There are monuments and 


306 


CRITICISM OF HISTORY. 


symbols of man’s handiwork upon which history and tra¬ 
dition pour darkness instead of light. 

Science alone can give us back the story of the long 
forgotten past; she has dug up the history of Hercula¬ 
neum and Pompeii, and she is now digging out of the 
ocean the story of lost continents, peopled with human 
millions, over which the surging sea ebbs and flows. 

History is distinct and clear through certain epochs ; 
but history has no means of connecting those epochs ; 
ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome each stand isolated and 
distinct, with new methods of reckoning time. History 
can read their stories, but when they were, she cannot 
tell: great gulfs of the unknown separate these ages of 
antiquity ; possibly of ignorance, perhaps of desolation ; 
and not impossible that great gulfs of sea-water lashed 
their tidal waves for intervening ages. There must have 
been time and adequate causes for forgetfulness. 

Babylonian, Egyptian, and Ninevite researches, 
through Bunsen, Layard, Muller, Shelling, Humboldt, 
Nelson, and others, have demonstrated the total unrelia¬ 
bility of so-called ancient history and Jewish chronology. 

We find that in Egypt, in India, and in Babylon a 
high degree not only of civilization but of learning and 
luxury, existed many thousand years ago. 

All things advance from imperfection towards the 
perfect; but the rate of progress is necessarily slow. 
Nations, languages, science, art, and intellectual systems 
do not spring up in a night, but are of slow growth. Na¬ 
tions are like men ; they are born, reach maturity, and 
grow old. The process, where a nation springs out of 
barbaric or savage conditions, requires immense periods ; 
and in reference to Egypt, it must have required thousands 
of years to develop the state of things found there when 


ANTIQUITY OF CIVILIZATION. 


307 


Menes turned the channel of the Nile. Bunsen gives 
twenty thousand years b. c., as the date of the beginning 
of what we find in Egypt, because it would require not 
less than that length of time, to develop one or both of 
the two vast families of languages in the East, namely, 
the Semitic and its antipodal speech. 

The Sanscrit is one branch of the early tongue, and 
is known to have been a dead language four thousand five 
hundred years ago, or long before Moses, and even then 
it was the offspring of other dead tongues. 

The Rig-Yeda is written in that u sacred tongue,” yet 
the Rig-Yeda is at least eighteen hundred years younger 
than another sacred volume, written in a language quite 
as ornate, full, and complete as that of the Yedas — the 
Egyptian “Book of the Dead ! ” The Iranian languages 
were an improvement on Turanian stocks ; and the num¬ 
ber of these off-shoots are to be counted by the hundred ; 
and yet there is another and totally distinct class of lan¬ 
guages — the Semitic, quite equal to the others, and which 
was developed in as early ages of the world. 

And what is true of language is more emphatically 
true of the early architecture of these nations. It bursts 
in upon us in meridian splendor ; we look around in vain 
for its earlier and ruder beginnings. 

We behold everywhere in Egypt perfected systems, 
from first to last ; there are no traces of a beginning ; we 
must look elsewhere for the marks of its beginning and 
slow development. 

Egypt and Assyria had made bricks for ages ; Baby¬ 
lon and Nineveh had stamped theirs with written sym¬ 
bols ; palaces and temples had grown up on the soil of 
Asia ; and elaborate sculptured stone slabs had handed over 
to posterity, in the language of advanced art, the story of 


308 


CRITICISM OF HISTORY. 


national greatness. On tlie banks of tlie Nile, architect¬ 
ure and sculpture had achieved high triumphs; the pyra¬ 
mids were faced with stupendous polished granite slabs ; 
a forest of gorgeous stone columns supported the temples. 
Colossal, perfected sculpture arose on every side, and 
every vacant spot was decorated with a motto or a 
painting. 

What we find in Egypt is perfected maturity ; what 
we do not find is the youth and infancy of that maturity. 

As with Egypt, so with Assyria, Chaldea, Babylon, 
and India; all that we know of the great centers of 
Asiatic dominion and civilization, speaks only of relative 
maturity. 

It is in vain, then, that we search Africa or Asia for 
the early eras of monumental history. It is still more in 
vain that we question written history for any information 
relative to the primeval world of man. The earliest lisp- 
ings of history give us but the names of perished empires. 
She speaks of the East only, and the East, everywhere, 
bears the unmistakable stamp of a recipient, not that of a 
Creator. We must look elsewhere for the Master and 
Teacher. 

Archaeology is a tame word ; it means but little ; if it 
could penetrate and remove the ice of polar continents ; 
if it could explore the Atlantic and all the seas ; if it 
could remove the volcanic debris from buried cities ; if 
it could sift the rock and sand of all the continents ; if it 
could bring back from the soul of things once solid forms, 
now changed to ashes and the air we breathe ; then the 
dust of the ages would mean something, and archaeology 
would become a mighty word. It is, however, more sug¬ 
gestive than history; it means more than traditions; 
within its narrow limits it is unraveling wonders ; its 


FORTY THOUSAND YEARS AGO. 


309 


skeleton forms, occasionally preserved from decay, till us 
with inferences ; and ghostly shadows of man’s ancient 
handiwork wrap us in inspirational dreams. 

Science alone can give us back the story of the long 
forgotten past. If you please, philosophy, astronomy, 
geology, archseology, history, traditions, religions,— God ; 
he alone can organize history from the debris of its ashes, 
sift the truth from ten thousand sources, and cement the 
gaps with the gilt-edged lightning of truth. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


HUMANITY’S CHILDHOOD—ANCIENT AGE OF BRONZE — EIGHTY 

THOUSAND YEARS AGO. 

Eminent geologic authorities, cited in chapter nine, 
have placed the ice period, in North America, at a time 
two hundred and fifty thousand years ago ; these figures 
agree with astronomy in reference to the changing in¬ 
clination of the earth, also with the changing relation of 
the North Star, as well as the changing u sideral duration 
of the moon.’’ 

If we accept the above figures, we must carry the 
Noachian deluge back to the remote date, at which time 
the earth’s axis was suddenly changed, bringing what had 
been the old arctic regions, Utah and the United States, 
buried in ice, under a temperate sun, and what had been 
a temperate and tropical country, Greenland and Alaska, 
under the blast of their present ice and cold. 

The tremendous lapse of time is implied from every 
standpoint by which we view it, whether to explain strata 
of earth above the drift, or the legends and traditions of 
the world relative to it; and in the light of close scientific 
examination it is the inference of the Bible itself. 

The great deluge, therefore, must be carried back, 
through a tremendous past, to a time earlier than has 
been conceived, approximating two hundred and fifty 
thousand years ago. These figures are based on eminent 
authority, and we reserve the right of changing our 
opinion in the light of new and more correct data. 

£310 J 


ANCIENT AGE OF BRONZE. 


311 


We have shown, in the preceding chapter, that 
Bunsen and others, carry Egyptian civilization back to a 
period forty thousand years ago. We have examined its 
monuments, analyzed ancient books, ancient religions, 
and still more ancient traditions. After all, our investi¬ 
gations have been confined to the age of man’s latest 
advancement, an era co-equal with the use of iron. 

Back of the age of letters is a history unwritten, of a 
people who have left no monuments behind them, no 
relics of sculptured stone, no hieroglyphic workings on 
rock. Such a people had inhabited the earth for long 
centuries ; played the tragedies of love and hate, of hope 
and disappointment; died and become forgotten, leaving 
no record of themselves on earth, save a few copper relics 
scattered on the American continent, through Europe, 
Asia, Africa, and Australia, long before Cheops or 
Cephron had reared in Egypt their pyramids, or Nimrod 
dreamed of a future Babylon. 

These people lived fifty thousand years ago, and 
perhaps this number might be multiplied by two, and 
still be within the period since they disappeared from the 
earth and were forgotten. 

Their wooden villages have perished, save in spots 
where favorable conditions have petrified enough to con¬ 
vince us that they were. 

They built villages of logs, chinked in with stones 
and clay, and roofed them with poles and bark, and 
reared barricades of upright timber as a defense from 
savage beasts. 

In Switzerland is discovered petrified ruins of their 

villages, in lake bottoms, reared on upright logs, filled 

in with stone. The ruins of one of these villages is 

seventy-one thousand square yards in extent; among the 

17 


312 


humanity's childhood. 


fossil debris are found fishing nets and baskets and nu¬ 
merous copper implements. 

More than two hundred of these settlements have 
been unearthed, favorable conditions of water preserving 
them, the great bulk of their villages having succumbed 
to the elements. 

Scattered more or less over the American continent 
are mounds, under which, with instruments and imple¬ 
ments of copper, lie the ashes and bones of some ancient 
unknown race; and from Peru to Lake Superior are 
found their scattered relics. 

Yast copper mines, of some ancient people, are 
found on the shores of Lake Superior, unknown alike to 
history and tradition. Llere mining operations were 
carried on upon a gigantic scale, not only along the 
shores, but out upon the islands. 

On Isle Royal, in Lake Superior, vast ancient mines 
are found in three separate places ; and the amount of 
tunneling exceeded the w r ork of twenty years by one of 
our large companies with a numerous force constantly 
employed ; in another place a tunnel extended in one con¬ 
tinuous line under the lake for two miles. 

Extensive ancient copper mines have also been dis¬ 
covered in Bolivia and Mexico; and no traditions of even 
the Aztecs point back to the mysterious, unknown people 
who worked them. 

The copper period has been one of the perplexing 
problems to scholars. 

Copper implements and symbols of ancient, strange 
workmanship have been found almost everywhere in Eu¬ 
rope ; they are especially abundant under the bogs of 
Ireland, and under the sands of Norway and Sweden, as 
well as in the ruins of the Swiss lake-villages, and in the 



EIGHTY THOUSAND TEAKS AGO. 


313 


mounds of Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and other 
Western and Middle States. 

Prof. Winchell says, “I have in my possession a 
copper coin which was drawn up in the boring of an ar¬ 
tesian well one hundred and fifteen feet deep at Lawn 
Pidge, Ill.; it was about the size and thickness of a silver 
dollar, and figured with hieroglyphics of an unknown 
language.” A coin with an inscription upon it. implies a 
government and organized society, as do also the inscrip¬ 
tions on the brick, found seventy feet below the surface 
in the lower Mississippi Valley. Says Donnelly, “There 
is a Pompeii, a great commercial city, buried somewhere 
in Illinois, of the most marvelous character.” 

The museum at Dublin contains nearly two thousand 
ancient copper implements and articles, picked up from 
excavations, wells, under peat bogs, etc. 

In Homer’s “Iliad” the warriors are armed with iron 
weapons. The tools employed in the building of Solo¬ 
mon’s temple were of iron ; this is true also of the build¬ 
ings of Babylon and the pyramids. 

The Etruscans, Phenicians, and Carthagenians were 
acquainted with the use of iron, and Wendell Phillips has 
shown that the extreme temper of their steel swords is a 
lost art. 

We are told that Cleopatra spoke to cities by means 
of iron wires, and that continuous iron rails have been un¬ 
earthed from the ancient city of Babylon. 

Copper is by no means a common metal, and scarcely 
ever found associated with pyramids, or in the ruins of the 
ancient eastern civilizations. 

It is plain, therefore, that the copper age must be 
carried back to a time antedating the civilizations of Eu¬ 
rope, antedating the ancient cities of India and Egypt, 


314 


humanity's childhood. 


antedating the pyramids, antedating columns and cornice 
of sawed stone, all of which speak emphatically of iron, 
and belonged to the iron age. 

Copper instruments and symbols found in abundance 
under the mounds of North America, in the Swiss lake- 
villages, and elsewhere on all the continents, together 
with the discovery of the ancient copper mines on Lake 
Superior, and in Mexico, throw a new conception upon 
these ancient races of people ; dignifying them to a con¬ 
dition of civilization, energy, ambition, and a spirit of 
adventure which we associate with civilized races. 

Their copper must have been conveyed in vessels 
across treacherous and stormy seas. These men left their 
homes, daring to brave the hardships and perils of the 
deep and of the wilderness, actuated by a spirit of ad¬ 
venture and ambition which we to-day would not be 
ashamed to acknowledge. 

The skulls of this people are small and low, and the 
hilts of their swords large enough, only, for thd boys of 
our time. Razor-like knives, elaborately wrought in cop¬ 
per, with etchings upon them, representing their ancient 
ships, have been found in the Swiss lake-villages, and in 
the American mounds. Three hundred and fifty of these 
small copper swords, with everything about them indi¬ 
cating a great antiquity, have been found alone in Den¬ 
mark ; and numerous copper implements and instruments 
of ancient unknown workmanship are accumulating in 
almost every country. 

The fact that the copper age antedates the age of iron, 
carries it back to a great antiquity. 

Its numerous wooden villages have perished ; these 
people have gone forever; God's progress marks the 
spot ; and empires beneath his silent sway, sweep head- 


THEIR WOODEN VILLAGES HAVE PERISHED. THESE PEOPLE ARE IN GOD'S ETERNITY. 






































































































ANCIENT AGE OF BRONZE. 


317 


long to destruction. 1 He, the while unmoved and heed¬ 
less, doth hear the rush of mighty generations, as they 
pass to the broad gulf of ruin, and doth stamp his signet 
on them, and they rise no more. 

1 There are numerous evidences of some ancient, inhabited, lost conti¬ 
nent, which once existed in the Pacific Ocean. These evidences now present 
themselves in the form of extensive Cyclopean ruins of cities, with sculptured 
palaces and temples, portions of which still project out of the waters in the 
form of islands, now barren and uninhabited. These ruins, in many places, 
extend into the sea until lost in its unexplored depths. 

There is not alone a “ lost Atlantis ” in the Atlantic Ocean ; but un¬ 
controvertible proof of some ancient inhabited world, at the present time 
slumbering beneath the waves of the Pacific Ocean. 

A recent number of the “ Atlantic Review ” contains a remarkable 
account by M. H. B. Sterndale, of the Cyclopean remains in Polynesia. They 
are more numerous and extensive than is imagined, and sometimes include 
gigantic defensive works. In the island of Lele, for example, in the Senia- 
vines (9 degrees south latitude, 160 east longitude), “an island has been 
walled to the summit, while on the neighboring shore is a wilderness of 
ruinous castles, the walls in some cases twelve feet thick and from thirty feet 
to forty feet in height. They are in the form of parallelograms two hundred 
feet by one hundred feet, some very much larger. Many of them are erected 
upon islands entirely artificial, surrounded by canals lined with stone, cross¬ 
ing each other at right angles, into which the tide flows.” Mr. Sterndale’s 
theory is that early Hindoos reached not only Polynesia, but Central America, 
and he points to the use by Polynesians of the word “Meru” for “paradise,” 
and the word “ dewa” for “ spirit,” as distinct evidence of this truth, which 
it would be if there were many such words. This subject needs a much more 
careful inquiry, and we rather wonder that, with so many millionaires seeking 
occupation, it has not been the object of a special expedition. 


CHAPTER XXV. 


HUMANITY’S BABYHOOD —THE PEOPLE OF TWO HUNDRED THOU¬ 
SAND YEARS AGO —ANCIENT AGE OF STONE. 

Scholars have long been perplexed to explain the 
existence of stone axes and other stone implements, taken 
from deep pits and excavations, sometimes sixty and a 
hundred feet below the surface, so numerous that wagon 
loads of these ancient axes, alone, are now accumulated 
in British museums ; picked up from railroad excavations, 
tunnels, wells, and otherwise underlying the gravel, and 
often associated with human skulls and skeletons, and 
bones of mastodons, mammals, and other extinct species. 

In the year 1819, there was discovered, deep buried in 
the Grampian Hills, the fossil remains of a gigantic whale, 
perforated by a lance or harpoon of deer’s horn. In this 
same Scotland, digging for the foundation of a church, 
was found a canoe hewn from a single oak, and within it 
a stone ax, twenty-five feet below the surface. 

In sinking ninety-five wells across the Egyptian delta, 
the French engineers under De Lesseps, came upon an 
immense statue of Raineses, the base of which was twelve 
feet below the surface; they continued to bore, and 
reached an additional depth of thirty-three feet, when the 
diggers ran upon numerous fragments of pottery and va¬ 
rious stone implements, of apparently savage workman¬ 
ship. In various other pits, in localities from ten to sixty 
miles below Cairo, and at a depth of from thirty to sixty 
[318] 


ANCIENT AGE OF STONE. 


319 


feet below the surface, were found numerous fragments of 
stone, ivory, and bone utensils, symbols and implements 
of pottery, mixed with traces of fossil human bones. 

In Central and South America, stone arrow heads 
have been found, perforating the skeletons of mastodons 
and mammoths, and otherwise associated in such a man¬ 
ner with the remains of various extinct animals, as to 
leave no room for doubt that man and the mastodon were 
contemporaries. 

Boucher made excavations in the department of the 
Seine, and found stone utensils and pottery, together 
with human bones, mixed with those of ancient animals, 
at a depth where no traces of man had been previously 
suspected. 

Nott and Gideon found a human skull and partially 
preserved human skeleton, in an excavation in Louisiana 
in the sand-rock sixty-eight feet below the surface. 

In an excavation at New Orleans, the diggers ran 
into successive strata of sandstone and partially ossified 
Cyprus forests, in such a manner that two gangs were 
employed, a gang of spadesmen with pickaxes and crow¬ 
bars, forcing their way through the hard gravel, then a 
gang of ax-men would cut their way through a forest 
layer, repeating this process four times, when at a depth 
of sixty-five feet, they discovered a human skull and skele¬ 
ton in a good state of preservation. 

Dr. Lund, the Danish naturalist, reports human 
bones of vast antiquity taken from similar excavations in 
Denmark. 

In the museum at Philadelphia is a human skull of 
undoubted vast antiquity ; and Huxley has in his posses¬ 
sion one that he thinks is, at the very least, a hundred 
thousand years old. Prof. Jamison reports similar human 


320 


humanity’s babyhood. 


bones taken from beneath peat bogs in Ireland, the per¬ 
son to whom they belonged having lived and died before 
the peat was formed. 

Dr. Lund discovered in Brazil thirty individual hu¬ 
man skeletons, of all ages, incorporated into the solid 
rock, associated with the bones of an extinct species of 
half-human ape ; a thick layer of rock covering this mau¬ 
soleum, attested the antiquity of these fossils. 

Prof. Frest reports the discovery of human bones 
taken from beneath chalk mines. 

Agassiz estimated the age of a human jaw T which he 
found in the solid limestone of Florida at one hundred 
and thirty-five thousand years. 

Numerous eminent geologists believe that the fossil 
human bones found in caves of Europe are not less than 
three hundred thousand years old. 

Ingersoll mentions a human skull taken from the 
base of Table Mountain, California, a part of the mount¬ 
ain having been formed since this man lived and died. 

Donnelly, referring to a human skull found in a cave 
at Hockdale, of vast antiquity, and resembling the ape 
species, says: u The man to whom it belonged must 
have been a barbarian brute of the lowest possible type.” 

The existence of numerous petrified skulls of vast 
antiquity, and of the lowest order, speak of ancient sav¬ 
age races scarcely above the gorilla — cave-dwellers, 
prowlers, murderers, cannibals. 

It is the verdict of scientific men that the cave- 
dwellers of England and France lived before the glacial 
epoch. Not only did man live during the drift age, but 
as proven by the revelations of the last few years, long 
before the age of ice and glaciers, long before the 
flood. 


TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS AGO. 


321 


The evidences of human existence in the tertiary age, 
an age prior to the ice period, have multiplied, and can 
be regarded to-day as a demonstration of science. 

Even in the lower miocene are discovered the evi¬ 
dences of human existence ; and says an eminent writer, 
We may believe that before the upheaval of the Alps 
and the Pyrenees, amid the luxuriant vegetation of the 
tertiary period, man inhabited this region.” 

Facts of this class are too numerous to mention ; 
they come to us from every part of the known world. 

Let us in imagination go back into ages so far re¬ 
mote that it becomes impossible to distinguish between 
human fossils which belong to ages before or since the 
deluge. 

Let us go back into the period when these savages 
lived and inhabited the globe. 

What changes this earth has seen I know not; what 
was then the map of its continents ; where the surging 
flood of its oceans ; where the two antipodes of polar ice ; 
where the belt of tropic vegetation ; where flowed its 
mighty rivers; where towered its mountains; where 
waved the landscape ; where the song of tropical birds. 

The very axial center upon which the earth revolved 
and sent its oceans by centrifugal force, bulging at the 
equator, has been changed. 

The great continents, inhabited by these savages, 
are things of the past; a new day in the world’s history 
has been evolved. 

We stand on a new earth, under a new heaven ; and 
picking up these mysterious fragments of bone, pottery, 
and stone symbols, by the lamp of the nineteenth century 
science, read the history of a mighty human epoch, that 
once upon a time existed in the unknown past. 


322 


humanity’s babyhood. 


Ancient river beds, crossing the continents in direc¬ 
tions totally different from the present, have already been 
mentioned. Three miles below Niagara Falls, at the 
whirlpool, on the west bank of the gorge, there is an ex¬ 
tensive ancient river bed, filled with gravel and sand, 
which can be traced to Lake Ontario. These ancient 
river beds were the channels of the antediluvian world, 
when this earth rolled on other axial centers, in an orbit 
more remote around the sun. 

Let us picture to ourselves the ancient age of human¬ 
ity’s childhood — savages, that in the ages of long ago 
inhabited the globe. 

We are back in the night of a tremendous antiquity, 
on strange continents surrounded with strange scenery ; 
but more strange are the semi-human beings around us. 

“ Still believe that in all ages, 

Every human heart is human, 

That in even savage bosoms, 

There are longings, yearnings, strivings, 

For the good they comprehend not, 

That the feeble hands and helpless, 

Groping blindly in the darkness, 

Touch God’s right hand in that darkness, 

And are lifted up and strengthened.” 

As elsewhere in human history, races are at war ; 
and the strong encroach upon and slay the weak. 

From the earliest dawn of humanity, even from his 
first animal state, war has been unceasing ; and the law of 
the “ survival of the fittest” has reigned supreme in all 
human struggles, and guided the outcome ; the strongest 
live. 

By this law race after race of inferior tribes has 
been exterminated from off the face of the earth. 


We are Rack in a Tremendous Past, Amid Strange Scenery, Surrounded by Strange Savages. ”[ 323 ] 



































































































































































































































































































































































































































































ANCIENT AGE OF STONE. 


325 


Progress is blind alike to nations, races, families, or 
individuals ; physical and mental superiority has been the 
watchword of the victorious, carrying death and extinction 
to the inferior; and the carnival of war has been the 
universal method of nature’s selections. 

The women of these early warriors are at work mak¬ 
ing stone axes, arrow-heads, and other implements from 
ivory, bone, and baked clay. 

In the night we discover the slanting foreheads and 
protruding jaws of these savages, dancing around fetish 
fires ; their bare chests and long arms are covered with 
ugly scars, tattooed, and painted ; while from the ears and 
nose are suspended trophies of victorious battle. The 
dog, obedient to his alert and savage master, is with 
them ; but even he has a savage aspect resembling the 
wolf and jackal. 

We behold, on different continents and islands, a 
great variety of tribes ; giants and pigmies ; red, white, 
black, and yellow men. Some are partly clothed in 
skins ; and in the colder climates, clad heavily with furs ; 
while the fig-leaf covers the nakedness of the tropics ; and 
numerous tribes, like the Australians, are covered witli 
hair. 

Here and there a few have attained considerable in¬ 
tellectual development, and are cultivating wild fruits, 
roots, and berries, which they store away for winter’s use. 

Progress is written in this age, as in all prior and 
subsequent times ; we discover in the higher human speci¬ 
mens a dawning knowledge of good and evila faint 
trace of the u image of God,” and in the heart and brain 
a rising seed of reason, affection, justice, mercy, and love. 

From this ancient stock, through emigrations and 
exterminations, wars and revolutions, dynasties and over- 


326 


humanity’s babyhood. 


throws, experiments with kings and self governments, 
codes of law exploded and replaced with better, trials with 
monogamy, polygamy, and free barbarous disregard of 
the higher affections, resulting at last in the holy alli¬ 
ance of individual homes, with one husband and one 
wife; arising from the worship of stones, stars, and the 
sun to the final worship of the abstract principles of jus¬ 
tice, mercy, and love, through long and varied epochs 
has arisen the nineteenth-century civilization; and we 
behold, to-day, the progeny of the early savages, count¬ 
ing the stars, talking with the lightnings, making the 
elements their slaves, and struggling to grasp the infinite 
plan, over which Jehovah reigns. 





Fossil Bones of a Semi-Human Monster Recently Found in Switzerland 

[ 328 ] 















CHAPTER XXVI. 


HUMANITY’S BIRTH — FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS AGO —AN¬ 
CIENT CAVE-DWELLERS. 

It will be remembered that we dropped the thread of 
our geologic history in the middle ot the sixth day, “the 
age of changing skeleton and coming brain,” the age 
prior to the Noachian deluge, which, according to fig¬ 
ures obtained from geologic and astronomic sources, has 
been placed at a period approximating two hundred and 
fifty thousand years ago. 

In the middle of the sixth day, we had discovered 
numerous “semi-human beasts,” arising to the form and 
figure of man ; numerous “ semi-human animals ; ” unlike, 
yet resembling, modern orangs, gorillas, monkeys, apes, 
and chimpanzees, with here and there hand and face, 
form and figure, prophesying the advent of humanity, 

“When God said. Let us make man;” 

and we are informed, in the fourth chapter of Genesis, 
that there had existed on this earth races of beings, in 
human form, below the image of God, from whom the 
Adamites, Cain and others, selected their wives, from 
whose brains and hearts there beamed no rays of Divinity, 
reason, reverence, sympathy, justice, or mercy : — 

“And the sons of God saw the daughters 
Of men, that they were fair ; and they took 
Themselves wives from all whom they chose.” 

[ 329 ] 


330 


HUMANITY'S BIRTH. 


It: is therefore plain that the Adamites, having risen 
above the plane of numerous savage races around them, 
regarded themselves as the sons, or favored people, of 
God; but the distinction between the Adamites and 
other races was not so great as to prevent them from 
intermarriage, the Adamites, or sons of God, with the 
daughters of men. 

In this early age of the human race, when numerous 
human forms were closely allied to, and rising out of, the 
animals, there might have been found every conceivable 
type of low savages. Like the present Bushmen races that 
live among rocks and sleep in bushes, branches of trees, 
or wherever night overtakes them ; they subsist on what¬ 
ever comes in their way, frogs, fruits, snakes, and even 
the flesh of their dead companions ; they have not even 
the affection or mercy of brutes, for they slay their par¬ 
ents as soon as they become unable to defend themselves. 
Their heads closely resemble the orang. 

The Esquimaux cannot count four, cannot compre¬ 
hend when this number is added to, or taken from. 

Livingstone found tribes of negroes in Africa, so 
intimately linked with baboons, gorillas, and monkeys, 
that it was difficult to tell where the one stopped and the 
other began. 

The African baboon is an animal of almost human 
form and intelligence ; they go in tribes, select a chief, 
establish lines, like sentinels, when gathering fruit, which 
they throw from one to another, thus conveying it for 
miles into the hidden recesses of the mountains; their 
orators, in almost human jargon, make speeches, wdiile 
the balance listen with silence and respect. 

The anthropoid apes are more human than the flat¬ 
headed Indians. 


ANCIENT CAVE-DWELLERS. 


331 


The appealing,, sympathetic, risable, sensible face of 
the chimpanzee, is more inviting and human than some 
negro races, with their thick lips and protruding jaws. 

The giant gorilla has the form and make-up, in all 
the anatomical essentials, of a man ; and the form of the 
pelvis and cranium approach even closer to modern 
European races than some negro tribes. 

Stephens, in his “ Arabia Petracia,” on encountering 
a boat-load of slaves from Dongola, was struck with their 
apish expression and manners, and with their close ap¬ 
proach to brutes, says : “It was striking and painful, and 
I could scarcely draw the lines of demarkation between the 
lowest of the negro races and their kinsmen ; though made 
in God’s image, there beamed no rays of divinity from 
their countenances, and they sat on the deck with their 
long arms wound round their knees, upon which rested 
their chins, precisely as we see in apes ; and as I have 
been electrified while gazing upon these caricatures of 
humanity, so here I was struck by the closeness of man’s 
approach to the animal kingdom.” 

The Bushmen lack almost every faculty we are in the 
habit of associating with human beings ; their heads, like 
the gorilla’s, lie mostly behind the ears, with no foreheads, 
and with protruding jaws, flat nose, and upper lip resem¬ 
bling the monkey ; their limbs are long and slender like 
the gorilla’s, and their agility is extreme ; while their 
bodies are covered with hair. 

The Angola orang has almost a human face and head, 
with a beautiful head of hair, “sideburns,” and whisk¬ 
ers ; its teeth and ears are fashioned like man’s, with 
almost a human pelvis, hand, and foot. 

Buff on says : “I have seen an educated orang taught, 
to show company to the door, and bow with politeness. 


332 


humanity's birth. 


I have seen it sit at table, unfold its napkin, wipe its lips, 
make use of knife, fork, and spoon, pour its drink into a 
cup, touch glasses when invited ; it was gentle and in¬ 
offensive, and approached strangers with respect." 

Orangs, apes, and monkeys display an astonishing 
power of imitation; they can be domesticated, educated, 
and made useful. 

The Bosjesmen woman, known by the name of the 
Hottentot Venus, who died in the museum at Paris, is an 
excellent example of her race as described by Cuvier: 
u She would pout her lips exactly like the orang ; her 
movements resembled the ape ; her lips were monstrously 
large, and she had ears like the monkey, and her head 
receded in front like the gorilla.” 

The Hottentot type, through the whole of Southern 
and Eastern Africa, bear all these marks, but especially 
so in the Bosjesmen type. 

Cuvier regards the Bosjesmen species as the lowest 
and most animal of human types, bridging the supposed 
chasm which separates man from the anthropoid apes; 
there are types of this race where the legs are bent out¬ 
ward and completely devoid of thighs and calves, while 
the feet are long and large, almost like the gorilla’s ; their 
voices are feeble and hoarse, the intellect low and dor¬ 
mant, and the passions, when excited, become brutal in 
the extreme, while many are lower than the brutes in the 
fact of cannibalism. 

Monkeys, apes, and chimpanzees have been trained 
and adapted to various kinds of domestic labor ; there is 
a mine in North Carolina where monkeys are at the pres¬ 
ent time employed to pick up shining particles. Monkeys 
have been taught to act the part of sailors, becoming 
very useful, especially for furling sails and coiling ropes 
in dangerous places, being excellent climbers. 


FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS AGO. 


333 


Tyrcord says that in his time the colonists of South 
Africa employed chimpanzees in various departments of 
labor. 

Breton has in his Chinese pictures a representation 
of monkeys gathering tea leaves. The ancient Egyptians 
made serviceable a variety of baboons remarkable for 
their intelligence. 

The ape is unquestionably the most man-like of the 
lower animals. He is far below the higher races of men, 
but the difference between him and the low human races, 
is less than the difference between these and higher hu¬ 
man races. 

The black chimpanzee of Africa not only resembles 
many of its negro cousins in physical contour, but in 
character and habits as well. These baboons, like the 
negroes, live in communities, fight in concert, using clubs 
as weapons, and throwing stones with great accuracy. 
They also care for their wounded with a kindness and 
sympathy that would reflect credit, upon higher races. 

The possession of language does not separate man 
from the animals. All animals have intonations by 
which they express their desires. Language is the ex¬ 
pression of thought, and brutes assuredly do this to each 
other. The dog calls others to him by a peculiar bark ; 
the lion roars; the tiger growls ; the birds sing ; each has 
a language of its own, to manifest affection, call its mate, 
or vent its rage. The organs of speech are present in all 
animals, and on their development depend the sounds 
employed by each species. They are quite imperfect in 
the orang, more perfect in the negro, yet not sufficiently 
so as to enable him to articulate difficult combinations of 
sounds. 

Man must have begun his existence as a low savage. 
If we trace history backwards into the night of traditions, 


humanity's blrth. 


>OA 
<JO± 

we find all early nations to have been the rudest savages. 
In the dim twilight, mythology reveals its Protean form, 
and sanctions our conjecture. The farther backward we 
go, the lower man becomes, until, lost by history, tradi¬ 
tion failing, reason inductively concludes that he must 
have been extremely low at the beginning. At every 
step we take in the opposite direction, man becomes bet¬ 
ter and wiser. At no period of the past has he been 
equal, either intellectually or morally, to his present 
attainments. 

In England, France, and other countries are discov¬ 
ered ancient caves bearing the evidences of a remote 
antiquity, containing skulls and skeletons of semi-human 
beings, mixed with feathers, shells, and bones of birds 
and animals, split open as if for the purpose of extracting 
the marrow. 

Topinard, the French anthropologist, says: “ By 
joining together various skulls of these ancient cave- 
dwellers, they discovered a remarkable sinking of the 
frontal vault, resembling in many respects the skulls of 
anthropoid apes ; the skulls of many of the ancient cave- 
dwellers remind one of the female gorilla, and yet they 
are clearly human ; in fact, there is no possible doubt 
of it.” 

In a collection of pliocene and miocene skulls by De 
Quatre, the French naturalist, he gave the generic name, 
u Constadt race;” he says, u At the tremendous remote 
period when these skulls lived, there was a great variety 
of races.” We cannot deny the fact that superior races 
increase in number, while inferior ones disappear ; the 
strong make war upon and exterminate the weak ; this 
has been the law from the earliest times. Speaking of 
the Constadt and Cro-Magum races, Topinard says : 
“ We saw that they were the skulls of men in the sense 


ANCIENT CAVE-DWELLERS. 


335 


with which we use the term, but far more allied to apes 
than to present intelligent races.” 

Comparing the skulls of the races of fifty thousand 
years ago, or the copper period, or even the skulls of the 
stone age of one hundred thousand years ago, they seem 
as yesterday in everything that gives human appearance, 
contour, and shape, when compared with these ancient 
pliocene and miocene skulls. 

The ancient cave-dwellers were unacquainted with 
the use of fire, as proven by the absence of ashes near 
their nests and hiding places ; a knowledge of the use of 
which is the first great attainment which elevates man 
above the animal kingdom. 

“There were,” says Topinard, “in the obscure ages 
of a half million years ago, a great variety of these half 
animal, half human races ; some with little round heads, 
others with narrow fiat heads, so closely allied to extinct 
species of orangs, apes, monkeys, gorillas, and white 
tailless Mexican dogs, that it is often difficult to classify 
or determine what are animal or what are human skulls 
and bones.” 

The human skulls above described belong to the tre¬ 
mendous past, and their variety, in form and size, become 
greater with each backward flight into the remote ages. 

When these races lived and inhabited the globe, they 
were crossing and amalgamating, and slowly climbing 
upward to symmetry, intelligence, and a dignified bear¬ 
ing, when God said, 

“Let us make man in our image.” 

His creative fiat worked on in slow, patient, progressive 
methods, producing step by step an order of human beings 
approaching nearer the dawn of the day in which we live. 

The carnage of strife and war went on through long 


humanity's birth. 


OO Li 

OOl) 

centuries, in which the weak were exterminated, and their 
places usurped by the strong; the fittest survived. 

In the early struggles between the crude races of men, 
wherein the forces were at work evolving a higher hu¬ 
manity, the vise of nature’s pruning and molding was 
terrific and severe. 

Survive or perish, invent means of defense against 
more barbarous races, and learn the art of providing sub¬ 
sistence against emergencies, or take your tomb in the 
petrified bones and ashes of oblivion. 

In union is strength ; create families ; organize into 
colonies ; form governments ; organize and constitute a 
society ; become the Adam of the world, with dominion 
over all the races of the earth, or die, fall beneath their 
power. 

With the birth of every intellectual new principle 
man has changed, accordingly, face, head, and form; 
and through the long ages of progressive amalgamations, 
not only in physiques, but in languages, ideas, and gov¬ 
ernments, has come civilization, has come Adam, a race 
bearing the stamp and signet of all the gods. 

We have linked the history of the evening and the 
morning of the earth’s sixth day, and seen the dawn and 
ending of an age of changing skeleton and coming brain ; 
and have again verified the axiom that nature is the name 
o* every effect whose cause is God ; who sleeps not, is not 
weary ; with whom slow circling ages are as transcient 
days ; in whose mind time is marked by great revolutions 
in events ; way marks of two eternities ; and as slowly 
progress has been upward, the record has been left in the 
earth, so that man can walk backward, and learn from 
whence he came. 



GORILLAS IX AFRICA 


[337] 























CHAPTER XXVII. 


BETWEEN TWO ETERNITIES. 

It lias been said that “ there exists between man and 
the animals an impassible gulf.” The brave author of 
“The Vestiges'" flew his kite, and landed it safely be¬ 
yond the waters of this great gulf, by means of which 
Darwin drew across a firmly fixed wire; Huxley and 
Heckle wound it with cords; and we have also worked 
upon it, making firm and strong the cable of the future 
great and popular bridge of science. 

When a small boy, my father took me to see the be¬ 
ginning of the then projected scheme of the Hoosac tun¬ 
nel, where men were at work boring from the two sides 
of the tremendous mountain of solid rock, forcing their 
way towards a common center. 

Such has been the plan of this book ; on the one side 
of creation we began at the beginning,— God,— and tun¬ 
neled our way step by step into the middle of the sixth 
day ; on the other side of the mountain, we began with 
the present, and worked our way backward through hu¬ 
man history, bronze ages, stone ages, and cave-dwellers ; 
and in the middle of the sixth day our openings have met, 
and we stand between the barren peaks of two eternities, 
surveying the beginning and the ending, the past and the 
present. 

Let us now ascend to the top of the mountain, and 
sink shafts from above, letting in floods of living light 

[ 339 ] 


34:0 


BETWEEN TWO ETERNITIES. 


upon all the past, and from this new position between the 
eternities, contemplate all the future. 

The author selects this little nook to pay tribute to 
the schools and teachers of his boyhood, the full-grown 
seed of whose sowing is this book. 

To Dr. Torsey and the professors of the Maine Wes¬ 
leyan Seminary at Kents Hill, where he prepared for 
college. 

To Drs. Stearns, Everett, Hedge, Clark, and the 
rest of the literary department of Harvard College. To 
Agassiz, Emerson, Longfellow, and that galaxy of scien¬ 
tific and literary stars that haloed the three years of his 
life spent in Cambridge, in a stupor of study, with visions 
and dreams. 

Nor would he forget to make a passing reference to 
the professors of his later surgical course, whose names 
are appended to his medical diplomas. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 


GENERAL SURVEY OF THE LAWS OF PROGRESSION. 

The tendency of scientific thought has been to trace 
the origin of man back to single pairs. 

True, as individuals, each one of us sprung from a 
single pair ; this is as far as such a philosophy can be 
carried. 

Each one of us had a father and a mother ; therefore 
when we trace back our individual genealogies, we write 
first the number 1,— the me,— to explain which we dis¬ 
cover the number 2 — a father and a mother ; and to 
explain them we discover the number 4 — their fathers 
and their mothers ; while the number of their parentage 
becomes 8 ; each of which had a father and a mother, 
and the number is again doubled ; and so on indefinitely. 

Hence, as we go back in our genealogies, the number 
increases in this doubling geometric ratio with each ante¬ 
cedent generation, and by a few moments’ figuring, we 
go back to a time when one million of our ancestors lived, 
all at the same time, on this earth ; they represented 
widely different races, spoke different languages, and in¬ 
habited various sections of the earth. 

I see no law going back from multiple to single ; on 
the contrary, the genealogy of all life goes back from 
single to multiple ; and life itself becomes more numer¬ 
ous, in the same geometric ratio, as we go back from 

[ 341 ] 


LAWS OF PROGRESS. 


342 

high to low, from single to multiple, through all the gen¬ 
erations and gradations downward and backward in 
the past. 

Therefore, it required millions of uniting generations 
of chemical principles to produce one spontaneous germ ; 
millions of uniting generations of germs to produce one 
coral; millions of uniting generations of corals to pro¬ 
duce one mollusk ; millions of uniting generations of 
mollusks to produce one fish ; millions of uniting genera¬ 
tions of fishes to produce one reptile ; millions of uniting 
generations of reptiles to produce one mammal ; millions 
of uniting generations of mammals to produce one ape ; 
millions of uniting generations of apes to produce one 
savage; millions of uniting generations of savages to 
produce one civilized man; millions of uniting genera¬ 
tions of civilized men to produce one Shakespeare. 

In the chapter on the mechanics of life, we found 
vital phenomena to consist in the union of a number of 
nature’s forces, and rising in a scale according to the 
ratio of complicity ; and here again we find unlike chem¬ 
ical elements uniting to form protoplasms ; unlike proto¬ 
plasms uniting to form globules ; unlike globules uniting 
to form cells ; unlike cells uniting to form organized 
beings ; organized beings uniting to form higher types ; 
races uniting and mixing their bloods to form great 
nations. This is true philosophically, words uniting to 
form languages, languages uniting to form ideas, ideas 
uniting to form sciences, sciences uniting to form great 
systems. 

Man has become the antitype of the universe ; in him 
all the forces of nature have locked their hands in union, 
and crowned him the Deity of the world 


THE ANCESTRAL TREE. 343 

The great anatomist, Odin, struck with the discovery 
that man embraced the combined physiques and mental 
powers of the whole animal kingdom, gave utterance to 
the then startling statement, 

“ Man is the sum total of all the animals/' 

We might add, the combined mentality of all the ani¬ 
mals ; he has the bravery of the lion ; the cunning of the 
fox; the sagacity of the dog; the ingenuity of the 
beaver ; the perseverance of the spider, the sensitiveness 
of the rabbit, the slyness of the cat, etc. 

If the early races of savage men sprung by crossings 
from lower types, it is absurd to suppose that they sprung 
from a single pair. 

Life was crossing and climbing upward everywhere, 
producing slow and insensible changes ; and at every 
point of the inhabited globe, evolving new types and 
higher species. 

It was the continued admixture among animal forms 
which brought into being a great variety of orangs, monk¬ 
eys, gorillas, apes, chimpanzees, etc. ; it was the con¬ 
tinued admixture among these which developed the first 
shadows of man ; and the long-continued amalgamations 
among the half human races that evolved savages ; and it 
was the admixture of barbarous races which has made en¬ 
lightenment ; and it is to-day the admixture of nations and 
bloods, that is developing the highest civilization ; wher¬ 
ever this stops, progress stops, and decay begins. Con¬ 
sanguinity is the destruction of families and the deatli of 
nations. 

America, made up as she is of the races of the earth, 
and vaccinated with Indian, Chinese, and African blood, 


344 


LAWS OF PROGRESS. 


will develop new forces, symmetry, and beauty of phy¬ 
sique, when the right proportion of these shall have be¬ 
come amalgamated. Already we hear it sometimes said 
that the octoroons of the South, a mixture as they are of 
one-eighth negro blood, are surpassingly beautiful, and 
their intellectualities, without advantages, are surprising. 

America, in the remote future, will see in the South 
an aristocracy of brunettes ; and by a collateral intermixt¬ 
ure of the light-colored races of the North, an aristocracy 
of blondes ; in whom will sing the muses of refinement, 
scholarship, and art. 

It was precisely such an amalgamation of races, some 
of w T hom were pure white, and others red, with an admixt¬ 
ure of black, brought from the heart of Africa as slaves 
to Egypt, that after a long train of generations gave to 
Egypt a new fire, and developed her greatest civilizations. 

For several hundred years, however, American en¬ 
lightenment, wherever the intermixture of negro blood 
takes place, will sink in the flood of ignorance and coarse 
material ; but out of a long night will come a new and 
glorious day. 

Going back from the present to the early savages, 
the lines of difference between races, in size, contour, 
color, etc., become greater with each backward evolution ; 
and accordingly we find pictured on the tombs of Egypt 
a great variety of races, with extremes from pure white to 
jet black, from large to small ; thus the lines of demarka- 
tion become greater in races going backward in the past, 
until we get back to the great dissimilarity of the early 
races, whose remote cousins of to-day are the orangs, 
monkeys, apes, gorillas, etc. Let us write this law in an 
exact formula: 


THE ANCESTRAL TREE. 


345 


The differences in races become greater in the ratio 
of the generations of ancestry / the types more dissimilar 
through all the gradations downward and backward in 
the past , until we come to the great dissimilarity of ele¬ 
ments , which underlie all life / a union of which consti¬ 
tuted the first and simplest life on our globe. 

Carbon and oxygen cross to form carbonic acid, hy¬ 
drogen and oxygen cross to form water, hydrogen and 
nitrogen cross to form ammonia ; these three, carbonic 
acid, water, and ammonia, cross to form protoplasm; 
nitrogen and oxygen cross to form air ; air, water, and 
protoplasm cross to form living germs ; and so on upward 
with the intricate and increasing complexity, until we ar¬ 
rive at the highest embodiments of life in the civilization 
of the nineteenth century. 

We herein discover that what has been urged as an 
objection becomes an argument in support of progress, 
the increasing varieties and greater differences of types as 
we go backward and downward ; to illustrate, assuming 
that these comparisons represent early human races : the 
ugly Hottentot, the little Eskimo, the red Indian, the 
black negro, the white Icelander, the hairy Australian; 
and wider still the difference between apes, orangs, and 
monkeys, and so on backward through a thousand diverg¬ 
ing lines of the animal kingdom. 

Thus nature has worked from a thousand dissimilar 
points and a thousand dissimilar methods, approaching 
nearer and nearer her ideal, at every crossing or union of 
dissimilars, until she has evolved mankind, a being of 
symmetry and mentality. 

True, nature has fixed limits to her crossings ; but 
she has left a broad highway from nature up to man. In 


346 


LAWS OF PROGRESS. 


other words, she has protected and made secure her ad¬ 
vance at every step ; man cannot cross with the animals, 
nor the animals with reptiles, nor reptiles with fishes : let 
us write this law in an exact formula : 

Elements of similarity must predominate over ele¬ 
ments of dissimilarity in parentage to beget offspring , amd 
by the affinity of similars , lock into one organization other 
dissimilar principles. 

The adhesion of similarity can alone chain the ele¬ 
ments of dissimilarity ; this is the law of all crossings, 
from the lowest to the highest ; and this law walls in and 
makes secure every step of advancement in the great high¬ 
way from low to high, from simple to complex, from 
nature up to man. 

We herein discover that nature is working towards 
the perfection of all the great plans of animal as well as 
human life. 

In our studies of geology, we were struck with the 
incomplete and chaotic crudeness of the fowls and rep¬ 
tiles of the fifth day ; wings, limbs, fins, organs, and parts, 
seemed mixed in strange discord ; but the laws governing 
crossings have gone on through all these’mighty ages, and 
to-day all the great plans of animal life present the same 
perfection of structure as in man. 

Thus we find great highways walled in by the immut¬ 
able laws of nature, and leading up towards the perfec¬ 
tion of all her ideals. 

With this law of progress aiming to amalgamate into 
a final homogeneous whole, the imperfect parts of all the 
ideals towards which nature is struggling, and in the end 
absolutely to perfect the human type; combining slowly 
the heterogeneous and dissimilar parts, raising the whole 
towards a high ideal ; towards a homogeneous amalga- 


A FINALLY PERFECTED HUMANITY. 


347 


mated perfect; with an infinity of ages ahead, and an 
infinity of material upon which to build — out of this 
complex, heterogeneous, and infinitely varied human sea, 
what a sublime destiny is prophesied for man ! However 
slow and painful each individual step in the ladder of 
progress, there is prophesied in the end an amalgamated, 
homogeneous perfect; there is in the distance a Christian 
millennium ; for in these innumerable laws of progress — 

“I beheld a ladder upon the earth, 

And the top of it reaches to heaven.” 

The entire philosophical system of Spencer is built 
on a principle seemingly the reverse of the position we 
have assumed in this chapter ; and his one fundamental 
law of evolution is that all things are running from the 
homogeneous into the heterogeneous, from the simple into 
the complex, from the unit into the multiple. 

We admit the truth of Mr. Spencer’s position, viewed 
from the one side of the complex sea of creation ; but his 
is only half the truth, and there is another compensatory 
collateral law seemingly its reverse, which we have eluci¬ 
dated in this chapter. 

Mr. Spencer’s position is true, units evolve multiples, 
and we have shown that multiples evolve units ; the 
homogeneous is constantly evolving the heterogeneous, and 
the heterogeneous again running into the homogeneous ; 
with a law of progress by its side, and a law of retrogres¬ 
sion ; the progress of the ideal and the retrogression of 
all the imperfect counterparts ; a final homogeneous per¬ 
fect, and not a heterogeneous imperfect, are the final 
aims of nature in all her departments. 

Nature is aiming towards the perfection of a homo¬ 
geneous humanity, and not a heterogeneous map of 


348 


LAWS OF PROGRESS. 


difference, strife, and war ; to a final homogeneous mind, 
and a final homogeneous heart, when “ every born of 
woman ” shall inherit equal possibilities, and humanity, 
actuated by the same impulses, loves and feelings, hope 
and faith, 

“ Shall beat their swords into plowshares, 

Their spears into pruning hooks ; 

Nation shall not rise up against nation, 

Neither shall they learn war any more.” 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


THE HUMAN EMBRYO —ITS DEVELOPMENT IS A MINIATURE REPE¬ 
TITION OF THE HISTORY OF LIFE’S PROGRESS ON THE GLOBE. 

“ There is a path which no fowl knoweth, 

Which the vulture’s eye hath not seen, 

In the shut-up doors of thy mother’s womb.” 

The development of every human embryo, from pro¬ 
toplasm to a mollusk, then to a fish, next to a reptile, 
next to a mammal, afterwards to a fetus, then to birth 
and babyhood, through childhood to manhood, corre¬ 
sponds with and repeats in miniature, the history of the 
development of life on this globe. 

The human embryo begins as an unorganized chem¬ 
ical compound. The elements next arrange themselves 
in a crystalline form, and it becomes protoplasm, pre¬ 
cisely such as the elements assumed far back in the past 
when they were mixing and uniting to form the first pro¬ 
toplasm on this globe. 

The human embryo next becomes a single minute 
cell, representing the early geologic age of corals. 

The human embryo next becomes a cluster of cells, 
typical of the next geologic age of sunfishes and low 
mollusks. 

The human embryo soon exhibits a single cavity or 
heart-sac, typical of the heart-cavity of higher mollusks, 
and in this stage represents the geologic age of mollusks. 

The human embryo next assumes an outline scarcely 
distinguishable from the fully-developed embryos of 

[349 J 


350 


THE HUMAN EMBRYO. 


fishes ; here the human embryo represents the geologic 
age of fishes, each possessed of two chambers in the 
heart. 

The human embryo next assumes strange dim out¬ 
line of limbs, representing the age of reptiles or fowls ; 
at this period each has three chambers in the heart. 

The human embryo next takes on a form indistin¬ 
guishable from the embryos of animals, each having four 
chambers in the heart ; at this period the human embryo 
represents the tertiary age of mammals. 

The human fetus continues to develop, and assumes 
the facial angle of apes and monkeys, and represents the 
highest type of life on this globe prior to the advent 
of man. 

The human fetus assumes a still higher facial angle 
and forehead, representing the early cave-dwellers, and 
low savages. 

The human babe comes into life ignorant and help¬ 
less, corresponding in mental characteristics with the 
early barbarians. 

The human babe rapidly brightens, its head changes, 
and it represents the ancient age of stone implements. 

In childhood is represented the ancient age of cop¬ 
per, bronze, and implements from the soft metals. 

The child continues to develop, representing the 
evolutions of civilization, with its conflict of peace and 
war, and various revolutions and evolutions of ideas. 

Thus the child repeats in miniature the story of 
man’s slow and painful evolution from the animal king¬ 
dom to the present giant civilizations. 

Nature, ever kind to us, has tied up here in the de¬ 
velopment of the human embryo a story of all the ages, 
showing us the beginning and all the upward evolutions 


THE STORY OF ALL THE AGES. 


351 


over which life has travelled in its long journey from the 
first dawning cells of the life of cycles of ages ago, 
through all its upward advancement, age by age, until 
the mighty civilizations of the present. 

Every living thing, regardless of its future, begins 
in embryo precisely alike ; their successive upward evo¬ 
lutions, side by side, step by step, are precisely alike ; 
and the future type of all forms of life is determined by 
the point where embryonic development stops, where 
hereditary advancement stops. 

This law of embryonic progress and metamorphosis 
from low to high, might be compared to a great highway, 
where the elements swarmed with germs, like motes in 
the sunbeam, led by the genii of Aladdin’s lamp, who 
touch the lamp at every mile-post, and the leading part of 
the swarming sea of living germs is slightly changed. 

Pursuing his journey, he touches the lamp at every 
mile-post, when the advancing part of the swarming cara¬ 
van of beings is changed ; he repeats this process at 
every mile-post, producing an order of beings higher and 
higher, at each mile-post evolving a new order of beings. 

He pursues this journey through the geologic ages, 
and repeats it in the winding path of the development of 
every human embryo, producing at every mile-post a 
higher type of beings, until he becomes the captain of the 
Websters and Edisons of the nineteenth century. 

Science with its lamp of logic, its microscope and 
telescope, winds its way backward in the footsteps of the 
path of the creative genii, and discovers an exact order 
and law of development in the evolutions of all life. 

Science again retraces its steps, and marks the mile¬ 
posts of geologic and embryotic advance ; and discovering 
a unity of plan in the development alike of life itself on 


352 


THE HUMAN EMBRYO. 


the globe, and each individual life, makes the chart the 
base of all classifications of the ascending series of life. 

Agassiz, seizing this clue, with the acumen of a mas¬ 
ter mind, made a classification the most perfect science 
has seen. He decides the rank of species in the scale of 
classification by embryology. If he wishes to determine 
which is higher in development, the sturgeon or the white- 
fish, he watches their embryonic changes, and discovers 
the sturgeon stopping, with a cartilaginous prophecy of 
bone ; while the white fish evolves a step higher, and ful¬ 
fills that prophecy in the development of a bony skeleton. 

In view of this law T , how clear becomes the explana¬ 
tion of partially-developed organs, found in all types of 
life; the outline of wings under the skins of beetles, the 
presence of teeth in the fetus of the whale, the stump of 
a tail in the tailless breeds of cattle, or re-appearance of 
minute dangling horns in hornless breeds. 

The tadpole of the common salamander has gills, and 
passes its existence in water; but the salamander-ultra lives 
high up among the mountains, and brings forth its young 
on dry land. Shortly before birth, however, these em¬ 
bryos are found swimming in water, with exquisitely feath¬ 
ered gills ; these embryos repeat the history of their 
ancestry, which slowly acquired organs and capacity of 
living out of the water. 

The boa-constrictor has rudiments of pelvic bones and 
hind limbs, placing him above ordinary snakes ; here is 
enacted the dream of nature under impossible conditions, 
like the imperfect nails which sometimes form on the 
stumps of amputated limbs. Another evolution of the 
embryo of the boa-constrictor would place him among the 
reptiles with limbs and bony skeleton structure. 

The limbs of man have been traced back step by 
step, through the comparative anatomy of the whole ani- 


EMBRYOS OF BIRDS, SNAKES, AND LIZARDS. 353 

mal kingdom, to the thread-like extensions from the sides 
of the lepidosiren. 

The amphisbsenoida has neither head nor skeleton, 
but a line represents the spinal nerve, this being an 
early condition of the larva of all mammals, even the 
embryo of man. 

Says Von Baer : “The embryos of mammalia, birds, 
snakes, and lizards are, in their early stages, so exceedingly 
alike, both as a whole and in the development of their 
parts, that it is often impossible to distinguish young em¬ 
bryos only by their size. 

u In my possession are two little embryos in spirits, 
whose names I have omitted to attach, and at present I 
am quite unable to say to what class they belong ; they 
may be snakes, lizards, birds, or even the embryos of 
higher animals, so complete is the similarity of the forma¬ 
tion of the head and trunk of the embryos of- all living 
things. The limbs are still absent, but even if they ex¬ 
isted in an early stage, we could learn nothing ; for the 
wings and feet of birds, the limbs of animals, and the 
hands and feet of man, all arise from the same funda¬ 
mental form.” 

“This is true,” says Darwin, “whether it be the 
young mammal nourished in the womb of its mother, 
the eggs of a bird hatched in a nest, or the spawn of a 
frog under water.” 

We have already stated that at the first inception of 
life, whether it be insect, fish, reptile, bird, mammal, or 
man, the initial cells scarcely differ at all ; all that could 
be predicted is that they are germs of life unfolding. 

These germs are the simple minute balls of a blind 
faith, with the history of their ancestry tied up in them; 
by which alone, and by the environments hereafter to sur¬ 
round them, will determine whether they shall occupy a 


354 


THE HUMAN EMBRYO. 


high or a low place in the world; becoming accordingly 
snake, bird, fish, beast, or man. 

Our lives, and the life of every living thing, is but 
the unfolded soul of a former faith, former histories, lives, 
and experiences, in blind faith repeating themselves, with 
the impress of their ancestry stamped upon them at the 
very inception, and fulfilled in the law of the subsequent 
environments which surround and develop each. 

Nearly every scientific, experienced physician has in 
his possession human embryos, thrown off at every 
stage of development, the product of disease and unavoid¬ 
able accidents ; sometimes, however, to the disgrace of 
human character, the product of malpractice on the part 
of those who have sold their souls and the honor of a high 
calling, for thirty pieces of silver, and become the accom¬ 
plices of a large class of unnatural husbands and wives, 
who have fallen to a condition below any example in the 
animal kingdom. 

“Write them childless, those cold hearted 
Who could spurn the generous boon, 

And whose souls with fear hath smarted, 

Lest thy blessings come too soon. 

“While he hath a child to love him, 

None can be poor, indeed, 

While he hath these friends beside him, 

None can sorrow, fear, or need. 

“But for thee, whose hearth is lonely, 

All unknown to children’s mirth. 

Spite of riches, thou art only 
Desolate and poor on earth.” 

Every one can have access to the observation of em¬ 
bryonic development within certain limits, by observing 
the hourly, daily, or weekly changes of incubating hen’s 
eggs —first a minute cell; then a layer of minute cells 


“IN THE SHUT-UP DOORS OF THY MOTHER’S WOMB.” 


355 


resembling a vegetable leaf ; then successively, several 
layers of cells ; and between, a layer of blood cells ; then 
the coiling of cells, like the coiling of a leaf into a dark 
line, gradually encircling a semi-glutinous fluid ;—here is 
represented the lower mollusks ; next two white fibrous 
sheaths are seen side by side, with a series of dots or cells 
between, while below is found a central cavity ; here is 
represented the heart and structure of higher mollusks; 
the line of dots finally develop into a spinal nerve and 
column, and the heart divides into two cavities ; here is 
represented fishes ; the bony structure next develops with 
strange, dim outline of limbs, and the heart divides into 
three cavities; here is represented reptiles, fowl, etc.; 
the embryo of the incubating egg has made its last meta- 
morphic change ; it is now the fetus of a hen, hereafter to 
develop in the line of hereditary stock; finally to evolve 
the fully developed hen. In this embryonic stage is 
represented the origin of fowls on the earth as a simple 
radiation from the embryos of other reptiles, each of 
which is precisely alike. We herein discern a confirma¬ 
tion of Genesis and geology that fowl and reptiles are 
allied to each other, having sprung out of the waters of 
the same age,— 

“ Let the waters bring forth abundantly 
The moving creature, and fowl that may fly above 
The earth in the open firmament of heaven.” 

Fowls and reptiles are a mere divergence of the same 
embryos, having previously been the embryos of fishes, 
and still earlier of mollusks, and still earlier a leaf of 
cells, and still earlier a single cell. 

In the wonderful transformation which batrachians 
undergo, the circulation of the blood is changed in accord¬ 
ance with the change in the organs of respiration. In an 


356 


THE HUMAN EMBRYO. 


early stage they have external gills, which appear as long 
fringes hanging loosely upon the side of the neck ; the 
external gills soon disappear, and are replaced by internal 
gills, when the tadpole exhibits its most perfect fish like 
form; its mode of locomotion also corresponds with 
fishes ; its breathing is essentially like fishes, water enter¬ 
ing the mouth, and is carried through the gills ; the lungs 
and arteries, at first rudimentary, increase in size, while 
the gills diminish, along with the blood-vessels connected 
with them, and the gill-breathing is gradually transformed 
into a lung-breathing animal. With these changes others 
no less extraordinary are going on ; a pelvis forms, and 
limbs sprout forth which become at last perfect and pow¬ 
erful ; in the meantime the tail has shortened, and disap¬ 
peared, and the embryo is now frog, lizard, or salamander. 

Unlike the embryonic evolutions within the womb, 
or others within an egg, these embryonic evolutions, from 
the first microbe or cell, can be hourly observed, in all 
of its changes, up to its almost human form in miniature. 

Science has verified the aphorism of the ancients, 
“all life springs from the egg” or first cell, whether 
vegetable, worm, fish, bird, mammal, or man. All life 
not only develops by the multiplication of cells, but per¬ 
petuates its progeny by the division of its own cells. In 
many of the low forms of life, worms, etc., life is propa¬ 
gated by simple divisions, or separation of the individual 
into many entities. If an earth-worm or a polyp be 
divided into several pieces, each fragment becomes a per¬ 
fect animal; also in vegetation, a willow branch planted 
in a moist soil soon assumes the shape of a perfect tree. 
In consequence of this faculty, many animals are able to 
reproduce parts of their bodies when accidentally lost; for 
it is well known that lobsters, crabs, and spiders, on los¬ 
ing limbs, acquire new ones. Lizards reproduce the tail 


ALL LIFE SPRINGS FROM THE EGG. 


857 


when removed, and in salamanders the bulk of the head 
may be amputated, including the eye, with its complicated 
structure, and new ones presently sprout out; this power 
is illustrated in our own bodies when a broken bone or 
other wound unites. 

All life springs from the egg, which is of itself a 
mere division of the cell of its ancestral life. From this 
“rib” “taken out of man” and uniting with the “rib” 
taken out of woman in the form of an egg, does all human 
life perpetuate itself. 

As the multiplying cells of vegetable life first evolve 
the leaf, which is coiled to form, alike, heart cavity or 
stem, and still further modified in fruit and flower; so 
also the multiple celled leaf composing the embryos of 
every living thing, are coiled and become the substance 
of the structure of every organ of life, through all the 
animal kingdom, even to the brain of man. 

The record of Genesis is here confirmed, that vege¬ 
table life first existed on the globe. This is true, not 
alone in herb yielding seed, but the early stages of 
all life. 

Man himself begins his development as a pure vege¬ 
tation by the simple multiplication of cells, and the first 
cell of his commencing life is as truly the “rib” of his 
parentage, a division and cell of his life, as the growing 
willow sprout. 


“ God caused a deep sleep to fall upon 
Adam, and he took one of his ribs, and 
Closed up the flesh instead thereof, and 
The rib which the Lord God had taken 
From man, made he a woman. She shall 
Be called woman, because she was taken 
Out of man. Therefore shall a man cleave 
Unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.” 


358 


THE HUMAN EMBRYO. 


All life, high or low, propagates itself by simple division ; 
this is as true of man as of the earth-worms, or the trans¬ 
planted willow sprout. The offspring is evolved from a 
cell divided from, or taken out of, the parent branch, 
or stock. 

The new life commences as a cell taken from the 
father’s own life, nourished, vitalized, and fed with the 
protoplasm of a mother’s egg ; here cell multiplies other 
cells, adding to itself and evolving step by step upward, 
developing higher and higher, until it bears the unmis¬ 
takable signet of its parentage. 

All forms of life commence development at the same 
point, the cell. Man has gone over as many and distinct 
metamorphic changes, as the sum of all the types of life 
below him ; he has passed as many changes as, and 
greater than, the tadpole or caterpillar, as he is higher. 

All life begins at precisely the same point, and di¬ 
verges in proportion to the number of its metamorphic 
changes. What nature has accomplished by the evolu¬ 
tions, in the slow process of all the ages, she now rapidly 
repeats in the development of every human being. 

Thus far, in this chapter, we have been studying the 
origin, evolutions, and birth of this human corruption. 
Place by its side the beginning and development of this 
mind in man ; this kingdom perchance of virtue, benevo¬ 
lence, sympathy, kindness, justice, and reverence for 
things above and beyond ; this seed which in the human 
heart is — 

“ Like a grain of mustard seed, the smallest 
Of all seeds; but when it has grown, 

It becomes the greatest of all trees, 

And the birds of heaven lodge in the branches.” 


CHAPTER XXX. 


PLANTS AND ANIMALS COMPARED WITH MAN —ALL LIFE BUT 

VARIATIONS OF ONE PLAN. 

W hat is there in common between a tree, birds warb¬ 
ling in the branches, or man enchanted by the sympho¬ 
nies of their music? 

The first scientific difference between vegetable and 
animal life is in the relative proportion of chemical ele¬ 
ments composing them. 

The elements underlying all forms of life are oxygen, 
hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon ; in vegetation, however, 
nitrogen is found less abundant than in animal tissue. 

Man and the animals consume oxygen, and give out 
carbon through their lungs ; while plants, breathing with 
their leaves, inhale carbon, and give out oxygen ; they 
are composed alike of a multiple of cells and nearly the 
same elements. 

We observe as we ascend step by step upward, from 
vegetation to animal life, a difference in the arrangement 
of cells, and the consequent formation of organs. 

The leaves of plants, which answer to the lungs of 
animals, instead of being clustered into one pair of lungs, 
are scattered in countless numbers over the branches. 

In plants, food is absorbed by means of numerous 
roots, while similar absorbents, the villi of the lacteals, 
cover the surface of a central cavity, forming the stomach. 

Vegetation can exist on crude inorganic substances, 
while man and the animals subsist on the same substances 
refined through vegetable growth. 


[359] 


360 COMPARATIVE VIEW OF PLANTS, ANIMALS, AND MAN. 


Man and the animals begin development from eggs 
or parent cells, plants from seed, another form of ances¬ 
tral cells. These eggs or seeds are extracted by the 
division of the parent in precisely the same manner as a 
cell or living piece of an earth-worm will produce another 
worm ; or a graft of willow, as well as the seed, will re¬ 
peat the parent tree. 

Nature’s seeds,— the prepared cells of animal life,— 
require the nourishment and vitalizing environments by 
absorption into the female ova, where cell unites with 
other cells, extracted from the female life ; these are nec¬ 
essary conditions of growth and development. 

The ova of man and the animals or the seed of plants 
is but a higher method of division, which in the polyps 
multiply by their own disintegration, each part becoming 
a progeny. 

Nature’s general laws of the reproduction of all forms 
of life do not essentially differ. Nor do these methods 
essentially differ from the methods by which nature germi¬ 
nates inorganic crystals, each after its kind. Nor do they 
essentially differ from the methods by which nature 
evolves new worlds in this canopy of stars; their dawn¬ 
ing fires were all lit by the fire of a parent sun. 

Explain to me, atheists and materialists, you who be¬ 
lieve in evolution and the developments of nature, why 
should the seeds and eggs of the varied types of life, 
which chemically do not differ at all — why should these 
germs produce such wonderfully varied fixed results ? 

You trace living things, through a series of evolutions, 
back to eggs and seed ; you trace life itself back through 
long ages to the germs of its beginning on the globe ; you 
trace the globe itself back to a beginning in chaotic nebula, 
then you think you have solved the whole mystery ; you 


WKO MADE GOD? 


361 


have, you say, no use for a God ; nature has evolved it 
all from the eggs and seed, from the chaos of long ago. 

But stop ; from the standpoint of your philosophy, you 
have created a greater mystery ; the latent possibility of a 
universe prior to the universe ; the eggs and seed of the 
long ago, encircling a mighty plan, hiding a wondrous 
design ; this is my God. 

You ask me who made God. I ask you who made 
the germs and seed, who tied up in the ages of long ago 
the plan of this wondrous unfolding, with all its moving 
suns and varied, sentient, feeling, thinking life ? 

Amid the clouds and darkness, the chaos of the early 
beginning, I behold an omnipresent and omniscient Mind, 
holding in its power the plan and history of this universe, 
in all its wondrous detail. 

Call the eggs, the seed, the dawning chaos, by the 
scientific name of matter, if you please ; ascribe to that 
chaos of matter, a cosmic will, a cosmic force, a cosmic 
intelligence, and a cosmic love, out of which by the force 
of fatalistic causes, has come the universe ; but grant me 
the sublimer, grander philosophy and name, contained in 
the one opening line of that book of books, ii In the begin¬ 
ning, God 

As in the eggs and seed of all life, so, also, in the 
cosmos of the dawning creation, was inscribed the fixed 
and future plan, the exact order of unfolding. 

Creation was as complete in the cosmos as it is to-day 
in its fulfillment. The stupendous volume of the infinite 
creation was written in all its sublime detail, and the ages 
were all classified and numbered ; mandates of imperative 
law had fixed every boundary, had prescribed the length¬ 
ening column of all the years ; hid away in that cosmos 
was the order, and all the pictures of present changing 


362 COMPARATIVE VIEW OF PLANTS, ANIMALS, AND MAN. 

phenomena; all the architectural designs; the human 
map, and the human history, were hid away in the vista 
of that chaos ; there was a code of ethics, and the shades 
of every prophet; there was the map of pyramids and 
cities ; there the flaming sword sheathed, and in its scab¬ 
bard ; there the deluge of Noah, stamped on parchment 
and in model ; there the kings of earth and the ascending 
smoke of every war ; and there Christ, with pitying com¬ 
placency, looking down through the ages, the ever-present 
“I Am,” carrying then, as when ascending the steep of 
Calvary’s hill, his cross ; there was in the dawning cosmos 
of creation, before the world was born, before the sun 
gave light and warmth, in the unconscious dark abyss of 
chaos ; in the plan, in the eggs, in the seed,— in the 
mind of God — 

“Every plant of the field before it was in the earth, 

And every herb of the field before it grew.” 

Material philosophy explains nothing. This universe 
is but the outward manifestation of the Eternal Divine, 
the materialization of his thought, himself revealed in 
nature. 

From a faith, extracted from a higher faith, like that 
tied up in the eggs and seed, planted in the human heart, 
will spring the eternal garb of man’s immortality. 

“ Embryos we must be, till we burst the shell : 

Yon ambient, azure shell, and spring to life — 

The life of gods, aye, transport, and of men.” 

Plants, like animals, manifest sensibilities, and dis¬ 
play the consciousness of pleasure and pain ; they wither 
and fade under a burning sun, and die from heat, cold, 
or poison. 


CONSIDER THE LILIES OF THE FIELD. 


363 


The sensitive plants shrink at the touch of man, be¬ 
come frightened at loud or uncommon sounds, drooping 
their leaves, and closing their pistils. 

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ; 

They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet 
I say unto you, that even Solomon in all 
His glory was not arrayed like one of these.” 

Plants sympathize with man, sharing his joys and 
sorrows ; and I have observed, when men and women 
were breathless and in tears, watching in suspense, hop¬ 
ing and praying, around the bed when mortality was 
fluttering with the angels, between earth and eternity — 1 
have observed not alone the lowing of cows, the whining 
of dogs, the moaning of cats, and distress of birds; but I 
have seen foliage hang its leaves, and even droop and die ; 
they, with the life and love released from its leaden pall, 
the mortal part laid on the bier, the dead from this prison 
house of clay let free, kissed the plants they loved, which, 
responding, died, and together took their immortal flight. 

“ Yes, I can fancy, in the spring 
Of childhood’s sunny hours, 

That nature’s infaut Priest and King 
Loved to play with flowers. 

“ In them he saw his Father’s face, 

All Godhead’s varied powers, 

And joyed each attribute to trace 
In sweet, unconscious flowers. 

“ In them he found where wisdom hides, 

And modest beauty cowers, 

And where Omnipotence resides, 

And tenderness, in flowers.” 

Lot us now take a comparative view of man and the 
animals, hastening over the four great divisions of Cuvier, 


364 COMPARATIVE VIEW OF PLANTS, ANIMALS, AND MAN. 

— vertebrae, articulates, radiates, and mollusks, having 
shown that a fundamental sameness of structure underlies 
them all. 

We will take, for comparison, man, the horse which 
draws bis carriage, and the dog which follows ; what can 
be more dissimilar than these ? To make the comparison 
more striking, let us add to the group the orang and 
frog. 

Every one familiar with comparative anatomy, is 
aware of the fact that there is not a bone, organ, tissue, or 
nerve in one that is not common to them all ; their appar¬ 
ent difference is caused by the comparative different de¬ 
velopment of separate parts ; a particular bone, or part, 
in one may be very large, while in the other the same 
bone, or part, may be relatively small. 

The tail of the horse and dog has its counterpart in 
the coccyx of the human skeleton ; in the horse and dog 
the separate joints composing this bone are greatly elon¬ 
gated, while in the human coccyx the same number of 
bones are flat and compressed into one, known as the 
sacrum, terminating the spinal column. 

The human knee has its counterpart in the stifle joint 
of the horse, and the human heel has its counterpart in 
the horse’s knee. Each of these joints is surrounded with 
tissue, muscle, blood-vessels, the exact counterpart of 
each other. These joints in man and the horse are seem¬ 
ingly very different, but anatomically they are the same. 
Every separate part in all the forms of life has a counter¬ 
part in all the others ; and the seemingly great differ¬ 
ences are differences only of the development of the parts 
composing them. 

The maxillary, or jaw-bone, of the horse is very 
large, while the bone in the human head is small and 
round, causing a very different appearance in the face of 


FO MAKE THE COMPARISON MORE STRIKING, LET US ADD TO THE GROUP THE APE AND FROG.” [ 365 ] 



























MAN AND THE ANIMALS COMPARED. 


367 


man and horse. But in the human head the cerebrum or 
frontal brain is very large, which same in the horse is 
small. Even the muscles by which the horse moves its 
ears exist undeveloped in man. The hair which thickly 
clothes the horse’s body has a counterpart in fine short 
hairs in the human skin. 

A unity of plan, pointing to a unity of origin, per¬ 
vades the whole domain of animal life. 

In man all the patterns of utility are combined ; it is 
this that gives him symmetry and beauty, makes him 
dignified in bearing, and the superior of the whole animal 
kingdom. 

Man’s greatest advantage over the animals is in the 
enormous development of his frontal brain. 

The causes which have led up to the varied species 
in the various developments of parts, have been the 
varied forces through all the ages. 

“It is probable,” says Darwin, “that the long neck 
of the giraffe was developed by severe and repeated 
drouths or floods, when those only, browsing vegetation 
from trees, which could reach a few inches above the 
common herd, survived. This process frequently re¬ 
peated, developed the long neck.” Other animals sought 
sustenance in other channels, preserving and developing 
the nose best suited for digging ; the claws best suited 
for climbing ; or the claws and tushes best suited for 
battle. 

By taking advantage of the forces of nature, man 
has modified the whole animal kingdom, and each year 
he is producing fleeter horses, also heavier and better 
draught stock. 

Man has almost created the present forms of garden 
vegetation. From wild and useless weeds, he has de¬ 
veloped useful roots, fruits, and flowers. This is the 


368 COMPARATIVE VIEW OF PLANTS, ANIMALS, AND MAN. 

origin of the cabbage and the cauliflower ; from a wild and 
worthless stock, have come all our apples; from a com¬ 
mon grass all our cereals. 

This world has seen a continuous panorama of varied 
changes, surrounding all forms of life with new and 
varied conditions, modifying all the types, and producing 
numerous species. 

The law of co-relation or harmony of parts, changing 
one part of an organization to harmonize with changes in 
other parts, has produced its results. Man has become 
dignified in physique with his advancing intelligence ; but 
lie has lost the big nostrils and acute sense of smell which 
the wild men of Australia still retain ; by which means, 
like fox-hounds, they are notified of an approaching foe. 
The fur which once clothed his body has disappeared 
with the dress of civilization, and the hand and foot have 
become more unique, and his bearing majestic, with the 
enlarging frontal region of his brain, which is the meas¬ 
ure of intelligence and refinement in man. 

Nature still presents gradations, in an ascending 
series of brain-bulbs, from its first beginning in the sensi¬ 
tive plants, through the ascending scale of the animal 
kingdom, upward to the great brain of man. And in 
him, gradations from the simpleton and savage, to the 
massive frontal brain of the highest, best, and noblest 
men. 

Here, in the frontal brain, sit enthroned the faculties 
of the human soul — reason, imagination, and an acute 
conscience. Here is the hall and temple of the parlia¬ 
ments of the world, the federations of men. Here, in 
the frontal brain, man lives the lives of all peoples, and 
of all races, in all ages. Here, he is a hero with Robe¬ 
spierre in the French Revolution ; listens to the philoso- 


GOI) IN THE HUMAN BRAIN. 


369 


pliy of Socrates, and is a citizen of Egypt in the days of 
Menes. Here, in the frontal region of the brain, man 
lives, alike, the past or future; goes back into the antiq¬ 
uities, is a savage with the savages, and in early geologic 
ages sits upon the cliffs — 

“ And hears the multitudinous laughter of the sea ; ” 

is present during the fiery turmoil of the earth’s early 
age, and rides the comet of chaos to a rounded world. 

Here, in the development of the frontal brain, man 
feels all crimes and their regrets, all virtues and their rich 
rewards ; he is victim and victor, slave and master, out¬ 
cast and king; he lives all lives and dies all deaths, 
explores all heaven, and feels the pangs of every hell. 

Here, in the frontal region of the human brain, man 
climbs the ladder of all thought, weighs the sun, measures 
the infinite expanse, contemplates all the stars, scales the 
eternal throne,— 

“ Rejudges its justice, and is the god of gods " 


20 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


PLASTICITY OF FLESH —ARGUMENTS FROM SURGERY. 

False joints sometimes occur in the human organiza¬ 
tion. Man by accident breaks a limb ; from carelessness, 
or inattention on the part of the surgeon, the fracture is 
left movable, and a false joint is formed, possessing, in a 
rudimentary degree, all the essential characteristics of 
other joints. And instances are on record when such ac¬ 
cidental new joints have been transmitted to offspring, by 
the same law of transmission by which families perpetuate 
five toes or five fingers. 

Plastic surgery is the building, by artificial means, of 
absolutely new organs or parts. The necessary tissue is 
sometimes turned or twisted into position from a neigh¬ 
boring locality, thus leaving a blood supply ; often, how¬ 
ever, the flesh is taken from other parts of the body, and 
even other persons ; and success has attended operations 
with flesh from other animals, especially that of the chicken 
and frog. 

The ugly deformities of hare-lips are sometimes over¬ 
come by the surgical manufacture of absolutely new lips, 
with flesh generally brought into position from the cheeks 
or chin. 

New noses are frequently made, with flaps turned 
from the tissue of the forehead or from the arm ; and in¬ 
stances are related where a portion of the thumb has been 
successfully grafted as the base of a new nose. The sur¬ 
gical methods of the manufacture of noses have become 

[ 370 J 



[S71] 




























' 

. 


















PLASTICITY OF FLESH. 


373 

so minutely perfected tliat the surgeon has his patterns 
for flaps, producing as desired, Roman, Grecian, or other 
type of noses, with flaps inverted from the forehead. 

Cruel as has been the process, monsters have been 
manufactured, for circus and show purposes, and human 
babes deformed, and forced to grow out of all resemblance 
to humanity. Cases of this kind have been discovered by 
the authorities, and the perpetrators of such crimes brought 
to justice. And as in all other monstrosities and deformi¬ 
ties, hereditary law often transfers them to progeny through 
long generations. 

Certain Indian tribes have had the custom of flatten¬ 
ing the heads of offspring by compression, until the tribes 
have become flat-headed by inheritance. 

English and American women are in the habit of con¬ 
stantly shaping the heads of their babies, by the pressure 
of the hand, materially changing the form. And the head 
of a baby which is allowed to lie constantly on one side is 
liable to become obliquely irregular. The simple habit of 
wiping the nose in one direction turns that organ accord- 
ingly. 

When tight lacing was the fashion, it was wonderful 
to see how far the unnatural deformity of the waist was 
often carried, and the law of hereditary transmission is as 
true here as elsewhere ; what parents acquire artificially is 
transmitted permanently. 

The little foot of the Chinese, created by tight lacing, 
has become hereditary in aristocratic circles. Fashion 
among the early races lias undoubtedly had much to do 
in molding physical contours and shaping the forms of 
progeny. 

Some animals by instinct remove unnecessary parts. 
It is said that when tails occur among the tailless dogs of 


371 ARGUMENT FROM SURGERY. 

Mexico, tlie mothers by instinct at once remove them. 
Such might have been the instinctive custom of African 
apes and orangs, species of which are tailless. According 
to Stanley and Livingstone, tails are often met at birth 
among certain races of low negroes ; from shame or natu¬ 
ral instinct, however, the mother at once removes them ; 
isolated cases of such monstrosities in men and women 
have been exhibited in the side-show circuses of this 
country and of Europe ; and the habit of removing tails 
or any other unnecessary part, by the laws of hereditament 
after a few generations, dispenses permanently with that 
part. 

Forced deformity by instinct is often practiced in the 
animal kingdom. 

Every worker honey bee is a deformed bee, forced to 
grow in a cell of given dimensions ; the queen, however, 
is a fully developed female bee. If she is destroyed, the 
swarm will at once go to work and tear down a worker¬ 
cell, containing the larva of a common worker, and build 
around it a larger queen-cell, allowing the germ to de- 
velope its natural size and form, thus manufacturing a 
queen bee at will. The growers of Italian queen bees take 
advantage of this principle, and with a small piece of 
Italian brood-comb, containing a number of cells, in 
which are the larvae of Italian bees, raise a corresponding 
number of Italian queens. This they accomplish by sim¬ 
ply placing a separate piece of Italian brood-comb in a 
separate box, and a handful of common black bees with 
it; from these germs they raise Italian queens. These 
queens need but one male contact in a lifetime, and the 
daily millions of their future eggs are prolific. 

It is wonderful how far deformities can be carried in 
the animal kingdom, and life sustained ; young animals 


PLASTICITY OF FLESH. 


375 


forced to grow in compression have been changed out of 
all resemblance to their parent form. It is not impossible 
that the accidental mutilation of animals, in the geologic 
ages, had something to do in evolving new types and 
species. Prof. Owen believes that the first appearance 
of limbs in the reptilian age might have resulted by the 
accidental displacement of the ribs of fishes, producing at 
last the limbs of reptiles ; developing through a long train 
of generations, in these dislocated ribs, false joints, and 
finally perfect joints and limbs. 

Every one is familiar with the plasticity of vegeta¬ 
tion to physical moldings, transplanting, cultivating, 
grafting, training, etc. Gardeners often reverse the posi¬ 
tion of roots, planting the limbs downward, with new and 
varied results. 

By means of grafting, a single tree can be made to 
yield a thousand varieties of fruit and flower. And the 
same principle is applied in what is known in surgery as 
“ skin grafting,” which consists in the grafting of skin 
or flesh from other persons or animals into the organiza¬ 
tion of another being. This is an every-day practice of 
surgery. 

We have already mentioned in another chapter that 
earth-worms, polyps, and other low forms of life, can be 
infinitely divided and subdivided, and from each piece a 
new creation evolved. In like manner, human flesh can 
not only be molded into almost any form, but its parts 
divided and sown broadcast upon the granulating surface 
of wounds, and each individual piece will become the 
nucleus of growth. 

Every intelligent surgeon is familiar with the fact 
that minute pieces of skin, cut from healthy tissue, and 
placed upon the surface of a wound, will each take root 


3 <6 


ARGUMENT FROM SURGERY. 


and become the center of forming skin tissue. And the 
epidermis scraped from the cuticle of the surgeon's arm, 
and thrown broadcast upon a healing sore, will rapidly 
facilitate the process of healing. 

Dermoid tumors have been removed from the ovaries 
of virgin females, containing perfect and even beautiful 
sets of human teeth, and whole clusters of perfectly formed 
human eyes, also locks of hair in nicely arranged curls, and 
perfectly formed separate organs, bones, and parts, in a 
strangely clustered conglomerate mass. Wonderful this 
principle of life blindly struggling to the repetition of the 
mind and form of the person from whose life it is de¬ 
rived, under impossible conditions ! Thomas, Sims, 
Ramsbotham, and numerous other medical writers, make 
mention of such wonderful creations, occasionally found 
in Dermoid tumors. 

Disease, wounds, etc., often necessitate the removal, 
by amputation, of whole organs of the human organiza¬ 
tions ; all of the extremities — both arms and both legs — 
have been lopped off, and life sustained ; the eyes, nose, 
ears, and lower jaw all removed, the person still clinging 
to life. Even portions of the frontal brain have been 
removed, the spleen and a whole kidney, also parts of 
the liver, stomach, lungs, etc., and life still sustained . 1 

1 The following is taken from the Eau Claire “ Times,” Aug. 3, 1887: 
“ Dr. W. E. Jurden on Tuesday of last week performed one of the most diffi~ 
cult and dangerous operations in surgery on Mr. John Medley, of Drywood, 
who has been an invalid for a year, and confined to his bed for the last six 
months. The patient was put under chloroform, and then Dr. Jurden began 
cutting through vital parts, where the slightest deviation of the knife would 
cause certain death, and opening the bladder at the proper place, surgical for¬ 
ceps were inserted, and a calcareous tumor removed, after which the ulcerated 
bladder was washed with tepid water. The stone when taken out weighed 
five ounces, and was as large as a hen’s egg. Mr. Medley made a splendid 
recovery.” 


PLASTICITY OF FLESH. 


377 


In the growth and development of al] forms of life, 
strange results sometimes follow from compression, dis¬ 
ease, or other abnormal circumstances affecting the 
embryo. 

In the dissection, at St. Louis, of a man with three 
legs, the extra limb proceeded from the back, and there 
was found the whole undeveloped outline of another per¬ 
son— his twin brother — forming a tumor under the skin ; 
every part of his organization had been dwarfed, except 
the one leg, which received its nourishment through the 
blood supply of his brother, whose more perfect existence 
enveloped him. Such mingling and growing together of 
two or more organizations in embryo, with arrested de¬ 
velopment of parts, are of common occurrence ; and 
no circus is complete without a number of such mon¬ 
strosities. 

The external human tissue can be made to take the 
place and assume the functions of the alimentary canal; 
and man and the animals have been nourished for long 
periods by means of the absorbents of the skin. The in¬ 
telligent surgeon often takes advantage of this principle, 
and sustains life for long periods when, from abscesses 
and other causes, the stomach and alimentary canal are 
rendered powerless to receive and absorb nourishment. 

The following is taken from the Eau Claire “Free Press,” 1880: “ Dr. 
Jurden has established a reputation as a practitioner of extraordinary merit, 
experience, and skill. His success has been positive, and his office has been 
visited by as many as one hundred patients in a single day. But few physi¬ 
cians have had the experience of Dr. Jurden, and no one in the county has 
been more uniformly successful.” 

The following is taken from the Eau Claire “Leader,” August, 1884: 
“It is idle to speak of Dr. Jurden’s well-merited success; his name has be¬ 
come a household word, and an army of patients in the city and elsewhere, 
who have found relief under his treatment, are monuments of his ability 
and skill.” 


378 


ARGUMENT FROM SURGERY. 


The external administrations of medicine through 
the absorbents of the skin, are to-day coming more or less 
into vogue by well-informed physicians. 

Upon the surgical removal of one organ, another at 
once commences development, supplying its place and 
performing its functions, and I have seen armless men 
who could write, eat, and use their feet as dexterously as 
we use our hands. 

The human eye shapes itself to one’s avocation or 
business. The pupils become permanently dilated in 
sailors and other persons accustomed to long-distance 
observations ; but the pupils of sewing women, micro- 
scopists, book-keepers, readers, etc., contract accordingly. 
And I have repeatedly met men and women with one 
large and one small pupil, and watched their motions as 
they unconsciously employed the microscopic eye for 
close observation, and the other, or telescopic eye, for 
long-distance observations. 

In the born blind, the nerve-bulbs on the fingers en¬ 
large, and become exquisitely susceptible to forms, sizes, 
hardness, and even color, taking almost the place of 
human eye-sight. It would follow, perhaps, if through a 
long train of generations some inherent disease should 
destroy the eyes of the fetal child, that compensatory 
nerve-bulbs would enlarge on the fingers, becoming more 
sensitive with each generation until rudimentary eyes on 
the tips of the fingers might result, the same as with the 
fish of the Mammoth Cave, which exhibit no trace of 
eyes, but which by continued breeding in sunlight, soon 
develop perfectly formed eyes. By the force of this law, 
some of the spiders, radiates, and star-fishes have hun¬ 
dreds and even millions of eyes, radiating from the sur- 


Plasticity of flesh. 


379 


face of their bodies, sometimes on separate stems, as if to 
make room for the innumerable clusters of their extended 
eyes. 

Reason tells us that if numerous gradations, from a 
simple nerve-bulb to an eye complex and perfect can be 
shown to exist in nature, as is certainly the case ; if, 
further, the eye ever varies, and the variations be inher¬ 
ited, as is likewise certainly the case ; then the conclusion 
logically follows that perfect and complex eyes would re¬ 
sult from natural selection through the long ages of life 
on the globe. 

How a nerve-bulb came to be sensitive to light, in¬ 
volves the same question as the origin of life itself. In 
searching for the gradations through which an organ has 
been perfected, we are forced to look to other species, in 
order to see what gradations are possible. 

The simplest organ which can be called an eye con¬ 
sists of an optic nerve, surrounded by pigment cells, 
without any lens, or other refractive body. Eyes of this 
simple nature are not capable of vision, and only serve to 
distinguish light from darkness. 

In certain star-fishes the pigment which surrounds 
the optic nerve is filled with transparent matter, project¬ 
ing with a convex surface, like the cornea of the higher 
animals ; in this we observe the first step towards the 
formation of a true picture-forming eye. 

In the vertebrate kingdom, we can start from an eye 
so simple that it consists, as in the lancelet, of a little sac 
of transparent skin, furnished with a nerve, and lined with 
pigment. In fishes and reptiles the structure of optical 
gradations is very great. 

Even in the human embryo the beautiful crystalline 


380 


ARGUMENT FROM SURGERY. 


lens is formed by an accumulation of epidermic cells, 
lying in sac-like folds of the skin ; and the vitreous body 
is formed from subcutaneous tissue. 

We know that the telescope has been perfected by 
the long-continued efforts of human intelligence, and we 
infer that the eye has been formed by an analogous proc¬ 
ess ; nature always watching each slight improvement, 
and carefully preserving it; generations after generations 
multiplying infinitely with natural selection, or the sur¬ 
vival of the fittest constantly picking out each improve¬ 
ment. With this process going on through millions of 
years, in millions of individuals of many kinds, may we 
not believe that nature will at last perfect a living optical 
instrument, as much superior to the artificial ones of glass, 
which man has made in the microscope and telescope, as 
the works of the Creator are superior to those of man ? 

What we have said in reference to the eye applies to 
each and every organ of the human body ; they all pre¬ 
sent somewhere in nature gradations from the crudest 
beginning to the most perfect; even to the brain of man, 
which descends with steady gradations through the animal 
kingdom until it disappears in the sensitive plants. 

And the history of the evolution and development of 
the separate organs of the human body, corresponds with 
the history of the evolutions of life itself on the globe. 

When the nerve-bulbs of the forehead had attained 
sensibility and got ahead of other nerve-bulbs in the race 
for light, the struggle for supremacy would no longer be 
contested by other nerves, and the line of development 
would therefore become established in those two nerves, 
perfecting at last the eye in the place where we now 
behold it. 


PLASTICITY OF FLESH. 


381 


The human eye and ear, as they now exist, are but 
the miniature of the possibilities of future development. 

So, also, of the human brain : its present develop¬ 
ment is but the dawn of future possibilities. We observe 
constantly new unfoldings in the human brain evolving 
such wonderful creations as Shakespeare, Blackstone, Ful¬ 
ton, Edison, and others, prophesying still new and greater 
developments in the brain of man. We are but initial 
types, the dim dawn of an intelligence and civilization yet 
to come. 

I have written this chapter to show the plasticity of 
life under the influence of environments, to show how 
living beings have been transformed by surrounding con¬ 
ditions, through all the long ages since life first made its 
appearance on the globe. 

When we consider the countless changes and varied 
forces which have acted upon life through the ages, it is 
only surprising that the species are not more numerous 
than they are, and that nature has not reached an ideal of 
perfection even higher than the present human eye, ear, 
hand, or brain. 

This human flesh differs in no manner from the flesh 
of all forms of life. The chemical elements of our bodies 
are precisely like the chemical elements which surround 
us, constituting air, water, earth, and rock. 

Man rises above crude inorganic matter, rises above 
nature, rises above flesh in his complicated organization, 
with its massive brain wherein he becomes the recipient 
of thought, volition, feeling, and emotion. Here he re¬ 
ceives and reflects the divine image. 

“He that soweth to the flesh shall reap corruption, 

But he that soweth to the spirit, life everlasting.” 


CHAPTER XXXII. 


ANTE-NATAL INFLUENCES—THE HUMAN EMBRYO ENVIRONED BY 

THE ENVIRONMENTS OF PARENTAGE — BIRTH-MARKS APPLIED 

TO EVOLUTION. 

The influences which surround the mother during the 
period of gestation, fore-ordain and determine the charac¬ 
ter of her offspring. 

The thought tied up in surrounding nature is reflected 
in the mind and contour of the child. This law reigns 
supreme, and mental impressions on the part of parentage 
transmit to progeny the physical and mental embodiments 
of such impressions. We read that — 

“Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and 
Of the hazel and chestnut tree, and peeled 
White streaks in them, and made the white appear. 

And he set the rods which he had peeled 
Before the flocks ; and the flocks conceived 
Before the rods, and brought forth cattle 
Ringstreaked, speckled, and spotted.” 

Under the force of this law, the birds and animals of 
the extreme north, surrounded with a snow-covered land¬ 
scape, have become clothed with a milk-white fur; even 
the seals derive their beautiful colors from the water and 
earth beneath the ice and on the rocks where they 
conceive. 

The grotesque and picturesque, the sublime and 
beautiful, all the varied forms of nature awakening 
[382] 


Mothers Gave Birth to Children Resembling the Gods, Before Whom They Knelt and Prayed. ’ [383] 



























































































































































































. • • 



























































































HEREDITARY LAW — BIRTHMARKS. 


385 


various emotions on the part of the mother, have their 
influence in modifying and molding the type of all life. 

A vine about the doorway of the most humble cot¬ 
tage, flowers in the windows, and the garden tastily ar¬ 
ranged with walks, shrubbery, and made the objects of 
attention and care, as well as the more costly splendors 
of homes decorated with carpets, sculpture, paintings, or 
otherwise made beautiful; whatever calls out taste, ideal¬ 
ity, and admiration of the refined, lovable, and lovely in 
parentage, not alone makes the children lovers of the sub¬ 
lime and beautiful, but even beautiful in face, form, and 
figure. 

And this applies to whatever in nature is distorted 
and ugly. In homes whether of poverty or wealth, 
whether a millionaire’s or the poor man’s cabin ; dishar¬ 
mony and discord, whatever excites selfishness, avarice, 
fear, or baser passions in human nature, is embodied 
in the offspring of the parentage of such homes and sur¬ 
roundings. 

It is well known that a mother sometimes gives birth 
to children resembling objects which she saw in fright, 
or over which she became ecstatic with delight, and chil¬ 
dren have been born affected by a mother’s fright from 
drunken men, who have reeled like drunkards all their 
lives. 

Every city should pass a law prohibiting merchants 
from publicly displaying grotesque, ugly, and ill-formed 
statues, because of their power through the mind of the 
mother to deform offspring. 

A case came under the writer’s observation where 
the face of the child was as ugly as the loathsome and 
diseased face that impressed the mother. Another young 


386 


ANTE-NATAL INFLUENCES. 


mother gave birtli to a child the exact pattern of a 
beautiful doll which she had admired and fondled. 

Cases are frequent where children resemble doctors, 
ministers, lawyers, and other men not their fathers, for 
whom the mother had an intense admiration, with his 
form and image constantly in her thoughts. 

The Romans and Grecians came to possess facial 
contour and bodily forms resembling their sculptured 
gods, before which their women knelt and prayed. The 
facial outlines of the Grecian deities were all fashioned 
after one classic plan, with the straight or monumental 
nose, and the force of this law gave to the race its charac¬ 
teristic feature. This was also true of the Romans ; they 
made the noses of their gods more prominent, especially 
in the central arch, at last making this nose the type of 
the race. 

The workings of this law present us every day with 
strange and peculiar results, and we meet persons who 
exhibit what are called “birthmarks,” perfect pictures, as 
if painted or molded on the human form, of strawberries, 
roses, mice, and other strange protuberances and colors. 

That this law has had an influence, through all the 
ages, in molding the types of life, cannot be questioned ; 
it has a bearing upon the highest and most sublime men¬ 
tal characteristics of nations and individual geniuses. 

It is said that the mother of Dante saw in imagina¬ 
tion the wonderful pantomimic scenery which is so sub¬ 
limely embodied in the writings of her son. The mother 
of Ezra Coleburn is said to have been occupied during 
the winter prior to his birth in the study of mathematics, 
conferring the wonderful traits afterwards exhibited in 
her son. 


HEREDITARY LAW — BIRTHMARKS. 


387 


Again: a mother, whose husband was a soldier, be¬ 
came imbued with an irresistible passion to behold con¬ 
quest and victory, following her husband in the camps 
and march of war, studying its plans, and filled with the 
fire of military enthusiasm ; she became the mother of 
the man whose name, so great in history, was Napoleon. 

Thus mental characteristics of individuals and of 
nations, also of the instincts and habits of animals, have 
been more or less derived from transient, emotional char¬ 
acteristics of parentage. And talents which parents pos¬ 
sess in a lesser or transient degree, have been perma¬ 
nently embodied in their progeny, in a higher and more 
enduring form. 

Nature has been struggling through all the ages to¬ 
wards the mirage of itself, in the production of a being 
that is the antitype and reflection of all its environments. 

In other words, this universe, with all of its compli¬ 
cated varied phenomena, in which God clothes his exist¬ 
ence and manifests his attributes, is struggling to repeat 
itself, not alone in the dignified bearing and divine form, 
but in the grander mental, moral, and immortal character¬ 
istics of human thought and human love. 

The character of the mind and soul of humanity, with 
good or evil stamped in the heart of every individual dur¬ 
ing the evolutions of this earthly life, are marks on em¬ 
bryos, that will deform or beautify man’s fuller and 
eternal existence. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 


ARGUMENT FROM THE BRAIN — PHRENOLOGY. 

If this book was one of biography, and I was going 
to pay tribute to men, I should do it to the discriminative 
and practical understandings manifest in the writings of 
Gall, Spurzheim, and Combe ; to the bold but true, loving 
spirits of these great fathers of a new science. 

These men have clearly demonstrated that the brain 
is the organ of the mind, and that it is composed of parts, 
having each a separate office to perform ; that one por¬ 
tion of the brain evolves will, another reason, another 
perception, another sympathy, and yet others mechanics, 
mathematics, affection, music, veneration, etc. 

Tyndall goes further, and remarks in substance, that 
mental processes are the result of the agitation of brain 
fiber ; that every separate fiber produces a distinct kind 
of thought or feeling. 

The separate organs of the brain, therefore, run into 
each other by an insensible gradation, just as thought and 
feeling present every degree and phase of manifestation, 
running into each other by an imperceptible blending. 
And yet each separate portion of the brain has for its 
office the production of different passions, emotions, 
sentiments, etc. 

Size, other things being equal, is a measure of power. 
By knowing, therefore, the location and office of the sepa¬ 
rate parts of the brain, the measure of the force and na- 

[388] 



VENERATION 


^ \sP\RITU 
AUTY 


hope 


SUBLiy,iTY t 


IDEALTY 


otsTRocrv 


Language 


“The General Grouping op the Phrenological Organs Are, 
I Think, Well Established.” 




















PHRENOLOGY. 


391 


tive capacity of an individual may be determined, and the 
latent talents, propensities, and natural instincts of a man 
may be measured by the measure of that portion . of the 
brain which produces them. * 

It has been demonstrated that the perceptive faculties, 
or the faculties of observation and quick judgment of 
forms, sizes, colors, weights, measurements, and figures, 
occupy the lower frontal region of the brain. 

The meditative faculties, consisting of the power to 
reason, analyze, compare, and imagine, occupy the mid¬ 
dle frontal region of the brain. The religious and benevo¬ 
lent faculties occupy the upper frontal portion of the brain. 
The self-controlling powers, or faculties of dignity and 
resolution, occupy the upper posterior portion of the brain. 
The loves and affections are located in the posterior basilar 
portions of the brain. The executive propensities, or 
propelling forces, occupy the centra] basilar, regions of 
the brain, widening the head when large at and behind 
the ears. 

The general groupings of the phrenological organs 
are, I think, well established. The minutia of the sys¬ 
tem, as taught by Fowler, dividing the brain into minute 
parts, and locating the little idiosyncrasies of character, is 
far from being demonstrated. And should the little de¬ 
tails of the system be proven hereafter to be true, phre¬ 
nology can in no way become a practicable art, since the 
very thicknesses and protuberances of the skull, together 
with the uncertainty of the education and culture of a par¬ 
ticular organ, would necessarily lead to what we have so 
often witnessed in itinerant phrenologists,— bumpology, 
quackology, and flatterology. 

Animals with largely developed cerebellums, or 

wide, full back-heads, have fierce passions, sexual im- 

21 


392 ARGUMENT FROM THE BRAIN. 

pulses, and love of offspring ; and in proportion as their 
foreheads are deficient, is observed the lack of intelli¬ 
gence. It is therefore a logical deduction that the base 
of the brain, or cerebellum, is devoted to the passions 
and propensities. 

The development in man of this portion of the brain 
differs greatly. A wide, thick-neck, broad and deep 
back-head, is recognized at once as the head of courage, 
terrible passions, and physical endurance. The bear, 
lion, tiger, etc., are broad across the back and base of 
the skull, the shape of their heads conforming to their 
dispositions, while the heads of the rabbit, sheep, horse, 
etc., are narrow in this region, differing, however, in dif¬ 
ferent individuals ; hence the various degrees of docility 
in these animals. 

The characteristic head of the pugilist is low, round, 
and wide, with a thick, bull-neck ; while people of an op¬ 
posite disposition, cowardly, timid, lacking force, nerve, 
and energy, and of sickly constitutions, have relatively 
narrow heads in this region. 

In animals, the frontal portion of the cerebrum, or 
forehead, is low, and never extends outward, overhanging 
the eyes ; but in man this portion of the brain projects 
forward over the eyes, rises up square and broad ; and in 
exact ratio to its development, becomes the possibility of 
education, and the acquisition of general intelligence. 

A long head, projecting forward in front of the ears, 
broad and high, is proverbial for wisdom. 

The enormous development of man’s cerebrum, or 
frontal brain, carries him far above the animals in intel¬ 
lectuality, reason, and imagination. And still above this, 
in man, is found a region of brain which, in the animals, 
exists only in embryo. And in exact proportion to the 


PHKENOLOGY. 


393 


height, width, and size of the upper frontal region of the 
brain, rises the scale of man’s moral and religious 
nature. 

The height and width of the back-head is the meas¬ 
ure of will, self-reliance, and conscientiousness. 

The width of the forehead in front of the ears, 
through the temples, and above the eyes, is the measure 
of music, mathematics, mechanical ingenuity, trade ar¬ 
rangement, taste, and love of the beautiful. 

The human brain is much larger in proportion to its 
size than that of any of the animals, especially in the 
frontal region — the region of the intellectual faculties. 

We see here, as elsewhere, that man differs from the 
animals only in development. 

No study more beautifully illustrates the principles 
by which nature has struggled upward through the ages, 
to higher mental positions and larger brains, than phre¬ 
nology. 

Nature still presents her gradations, in a steadily 
ascending series, commencing with a trace of a nervous 
system in the sensitive plants, through its ascending de¬ 
velopment in the animal kingdom, upward to the great 
brain of man ; and in him presents countless varieties 
and gradations, corresponding with his varied character¬ 
istics and mental and moral traits. 

Phrenology has been objected to on the ground that 
it leads to materialism, and the annihilation of the mind 
at death ; such is the first superficial inference ; but on 
deeper reflection, we reach a contrary conclusion. 

In the same manner as the eye only receives the 
light and impressions from wfithout, and its development 
and perfection is the measure of capacity ; or, as the ear 
is but the recejptaculum of intonations, and its develop- 


394 


ARGUMENT FROM THE BRAIN. 


ment or perfection is the measure of capacity ; or, as the 
various senses of smell, touch, and taste depend on the 
development and perfection of certain portions of the 
brain, the development and perfection of which is the 
measure of capacity; so, likewise, the separate organs of 
the brain are but the receptacles of sensation, thought, 
and feeling from without. 

In the brain, with the varied organs, like measures 
of varied sizes, man receives the consciousness of that 
which exists without and around him, in this stupendous 
universe ; receives, in short, the eternal thought of God, 
manifested in the varied phenomena of nature, reflecting 
varied sensations and feelings. 

The brain, with its separate parts, does not create 
thought, any more than the eye is the creator of what 
it beholds, or the ear the creator of intonations or 
sounds. 

The human brain, therefore, is the receptaculum of 
God ; and phrenology is the measure of individual capaci¬ 
ties, in the reception and indwelling of the divine nature 
and essence. The brain receives and reflects that which 
is divine and eternal, and the development of its organs 
is the measure of the divine in man. 

The eye may crumble into dust, but the universe 
remains ; the brain may fall away, and e’en to sense 
become a vanquished shadow ; but thought and feeling, 
emotion and sentiment, in short, the soul of man, will 
continue to live with God among the stars. 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 


“The Face is as a Book Where Men Mat Read Strange Matters.’’ 


[393] 


















E ’ H - 




































. 










CHAPTER XXXIV. 


ARGUMENT FROM THE HUMAN FACE AND FORM — PHYSIOGNOMY. 


“Tell me by what hidden magic 
Our impressions first are led 
Into liking or disliking, 

Oft before a word is said. 

“ Why should smiles ofttimes repel us, 

Bright eyes turn our feeling cold ; 

Wliat is that which comes to tell us 
All that glitters is not gold ? 

“ Is it instinct, is it nature, 

Or some freak or faulty chance 
That our likings or dislikings 
Limit to a single glance ? 

“ Is it ? Pray will no one tell me, 

No one show sufficient cause 
Why our liking and disliking 

Have theirjown instinctive laws ?” 

Even as man is related to the animal kingdom, hav¬ 
ing been evolved out of it, both as regards his descent 
in the geologic ages, and also as regards his individual 
embryonic development, he still retains more or less the 
resemblance of his ancestral pedigree, and consequent 
relationship to various animals. 

And as in looks and appearances, so in character ; 
even as men resemble various animals, so also a sameness 
in their natures. 


[ 397 J 


398 


ARGUMENT FROM THE FACE. 


Some men look like lions, others like bull dogs, some 
have the face of a hog, others the hawk-nose and piercing 
eye of the eagle ; some men look like hounds, others like 
ducks, while many resemble, as we have shown in 
former chapters, monkeys, orangs, and chimpanzees. 
And as in looks and appearances, so in character : almost 
every day we meet men who present striking likenesses 
to various animals ; if we study them closely, we will dis¬ 
cover that the sameness is continued in their manner, 
habits, disposition, and characteristics. 

The lowest and most loathsome of the animal king¬ 
dom, the snakes, writhe their poisonous forms on their 
faces, upon the earth, and at our feet; animals higher, 
and midway to man, walk on all fours, while man him¬ 
self stands erect; at once we behold in his dignified bear¬ 
ing and heavenward glance a lofty nature. 

The angle of gradation, from a horizontal to a per¬ 
pendicular , 1 rises in successive degrees through the whole 
animal kingdom, from the worms and reptiles to the di¬ 
vine form of man. 

This principle has an application to the head and 
face. Beings of the lowest mental make-up present a 
face nearly horizontal, while in animals slightly higher, 
the line is raised to an incline plane. This line continues 
to ascend in the face and head, in the successive upward 
steps in the animal kingdom, until it becomes a perpen¬ 
dicular in the great men and geniuses of our time. 

Applying this principle to the human face, as pre¬ 
sented by various individuals, we observe a great differ¬ 
ence or deviation from an incline plane to a perpendicular ; 
and as this line ascends, likewise ascends the mental, 
moral, and divine characteristics of a man. 

1 See picture of man and the animals. 


THE FACIAL ANGLE. (See Opposite Page.) [399] 


















































































































































































. 











PHYSIOGNOMY. 


401 


Thus a line from the under jaw to the forehead of the 
snakes and reptiles is almost flat; this line rises by suc¬ 
cessive degrees in the animal kingdom, and in the horse 
it produces an incline plane of about forty-five degrees ; 
and the line still ascends through various animals, being 
considerably higher in monkeys, orangs, and still higher 
in idiots and savages ; rising in each individual with the 
increasing degree of his intelligence, until it becomes a 
perpendicular, touching the chin and forehead of the 
greatest and best men. 

“The countenance of the wise showeth wisdom ; 

But the eyes of the fool are in the ends of the earth/’ 

A high forehead is proverbial for kindness and sym¬ 
pathy. A high, broad, square forehead, with prominent 
corners, is noted for intelligence, mirth, and politeness. 
A high middle head is indicative of a religious nature. 
A long head and square forehead, with great depth, 
projecting forward from the ear, and overhanging the 
eyes, is proverbial for sense and good judgment. A 
high back head indicates self-esteem and self-control. 
A low, wide head and thick neck are characteristic of the 
ferocious, affectionate, and powerful animals, and is the 
characteristic head of fighters. 

Napoleon chose big-nosed men for his generals. 
The larger the nose, the more there is of character. 

The Grecian straight or sculptured nose was the nose 
of a people distinguished for scholarship, refinement, and 
art; so likewise, w T hen you find it in individuals of any 
race, it means scholarship. 

The Roman hawked and prominent nose was the 
nose of a people characterized for warlike aggressive- 


402 ARGUMENT FROM THE FACE. 

ness ; it is the nose of success, force, and will rule or 
ruin, wherever found. 

The Jewish nose, hawked, prominent, and wide in 
its lower portions, characterizes a people noted for their 
trading qualities and financial abilities; it is the nose of 
barter and sale, speculation and accumulation wherever 
found. 

The aquiline or concave nose is the nose of female 
beauty, and what we admire in women, a lack of combat¬ 
iveness and force. 

The snub nose is still more indicative of a lack of 
character, and is characteristic of boasting, bickering, 
and fault-finding. 

The inquisitive nose is long, and projects straight 
outward from the face, as if made for the purpose of pry¬ 
ing, eternally, into somebody’s business. 

The apprehensive nose is long, and projects straight 
downward over the mouth, and characterizes a mind 
turned downward to worldly thoughts and forebodings of 
evil. These noses are found variously combined in indi¬ 
viduals, and so in character. 

Mirthfulness turns up the corners of the mouth, while 
sorrow and sadness draw them downward ; one can some¬ 
times read pages of sorrow or mirth in the secret history 
of a friend, by the changed aspect of this feature, alone. 

A deep, perpendicular line between the eyebrows, in 
the forehead, indicates developed thought and a sense of 
justice. When Lincoln took the presidential chair, this 
line was not prominent, but after six years of perplexing 
discriminations, here as elsewhere in his face, a deep line 
was carved. 

Transverse lines outward from the mouth denote hos¬ 
pitality and a humane spirit. 



m 










































PHYSIOGNOMY. 


405 


Dimples in the cheeks, chin, or elsewhere denote ex¬ 
treme sensitiveness to pain and pleasure. 

High and broad cheek-bones, below the temples, 
are indicative of self-reliance and sympathy ; it is the sign 
of a good nurse, motherly devotion, and the natural 
doctor. 

Horizontal lines across the forehead and about the 
eyes, denote experience and hard study, worriment and 
perplexity, a life that has seen shadows with successes. 

A straight, stiff upper lip, indicates unyielding firm¬ 
ness ; hence the expression, 4 4 Keep a stiff upper lip. ” 

Mouth and jaws, projecting outward, indicate good 
digestion, with animal propensities; accompanied with 
thick lips, as in the negro, brutality, passion, and coarse¬ 
ness of character. Mouth and teeth inclined inward indi¬ 
cate deficient vitality, lack of force ; and with thin lips, 
extreme delicacy and sensitiveness. 

The forward projection of the chin is the measure of 
the loves and affections, and always corresponds with the 
development of the back head. 

A long or downward extending chin, is the measure 
of self-control. A broad chin indicates stability, a sharp 
chin, intensity. 

“Let the blue eyes tell of love, the black of beauty ; 

But the grey soars far above, radiant in the realms of duty. 

Sing then of the blue eyes love, the black of beauty, 

But the grey we will crown above, radiant in the realms of duty.” 

A large, open eye indicates credulity and confidence ; 
while reserve, suspicion, and cunning partially close the 
lids. Large pupils denote expanded projects, confidence, 
and imagination ; while small pupils, close observation 
and analysis. In proportion as the mind is flexible, the 


406 


ARGUMENT FROM THE FACE. 


pupil of the eye dilates and expands under the influence 
of varied emotions. A command of words, or gift of gab, 
with or without great intelligence, forces the eye forward 
and outward, creating what has been called the u bag eye." 
Butler and Beecher, with their great minds back of a com¬ 
mand of words, are good illustrations. 

Faces come to resemble and indicate the very avoca¬ 
tions in life which persons follow ; and ministers, lawyers, 
doctors, politicians, editors, merchants, mechanics, sol¬ 
diers, sailors, miners, and laboring men, can generally 
be recognized, at a glance, by the practical physiogno¬ 
mist. 

The human face, like a book, contains in hiero¬ 
glyphics the history of a life. Its form changes with 
every vice or virtue, with every sinful passion, every 
kindness and sympathy ; the acts and thoughts of a life 
are here embodied, so that all who run may read. 

“An artist wished to paint a face, 

The symbol of innocence and joy. 

He took a child for his ideal. 

And drew the likeness of a boy. 

“Long years passed on ; the artist now, 

A gray old man, one picture more 
Designed to make ; and called it “guilt ” — 

A contrast of the child of yore. 

“ He went into a prison dark, 

Its cold walls damp with slime, 

And painted a wretched man chained there, 
Condemned to death for crime. 

“ Beside the first he placed the last, 

And when he learned the prisoner’s name. 

He found the laughing, innocent child, 

And hardened man were but the same.” 


PHYSIOGNOMY. 


407 


All things are what they seem to be ; and so in 

4 

human nature, men are what they seem. Appearances 
are sometimes said to be deceitful; but we have only to 
examine the thing more closely, when it will appear to be 
just what it is. If a wicked knave tries to appear honest 
and in part succeeds, it is because he understands the 
appearance of honesty, and tries to imitate it; the coun¬ 
terfeit, however, is superficial, and cannot deceive the 
close observer. 

The human voice is in exact accord with character ; 

and its intonations and sounds not onlv differ in individu- 

«/ 

als, but fluctuate in the play of the various passions. 
The elocutionist strives to imitate the natural language of 
the passions, and the orotund, guttural, aspirat.e, tremor, 
and other tones excite within us hatred, sublimity, re¬ 
venge, fear, wonder, affection, reverence, mercy, etc. 
Even the intonations or sounds produce these effects 
unaccompanied with words ; hence the fundamental trait 
of character is at once recognized in a person’s voice. 

Instinctively we all understand the language of ani¬ 
mals and the meaning of their voices, even if we do not 
know their natures ; the roar of the lion, the growl of the 
hyena, the bark of the dog, the mew of the cat, the chat¬ 
ter of the squirrel, or the song of birds. 

The walk also indicates character ; slvness or secret- 
iveness walks on the toes, firmness on the heel; self- 
importance throws the head backward, and walks with the 
characteristic strutting air. 

We have seen that man rises above the animals, and 
out of the animals in every department we have studied ; 
we find that his superiority over the animals consists 
alone in a higher development, especially of the frontal 
region of the brain, where God himself sits enthroned. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 


SOCIOLOGY —A MOTHER’S LOVE —CHILDREN — EARLY 

INFLUENCES. 

We come now to the study of children, the flotsam 
and jetsam on the rude sea of life. How I love you, 
lamb-like flocks of little things ! 

“ Y r ours is the sunny dimple, 

Radiant with untutored smiles ; 

Yours the heart serene and simple, 

All unwarped with selfish wiles. 

“ On your dimpled, sunny faces, 

There are no deep lines of sin, 

None of passion’s dreary traces, 

That betray the wounds within.” 

Let us trace the child in its varied surroundings, in 
the influences which act upon it, for good or evil; in its 
wanderings, surrounded bv the winds and waves of temp¬ 
tation, perhaps dashed on the shoals of dishonor and 
crime ; or perchance surrounded with kindlier influences, 
impressed by daily lessons, and stamped with all the 
markings of a noble nature, reared into manhood and 
womanhood; the embodiments of virtue, purity, self- 
sacrificing benevolence, piety, wisdom, and made the 
light and strength of society. 

Dickens has well shown, in his u Oliver Twist,” that 
inherent nobility and goodness will sometimes survive 
the force of evil example and evil surroundings, amid 
[408] 


WE COME NOW TO THE STUDY OF CHILDREN.” [ 409 ] 





































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































* 




CHILDREN. 


411 


vile associations, classed with its companionship under 
the bane of vice ; receiving alike the condemnation of 
society, and the enticing glare from dens of sin ; with¬ 
standing the force of circumstances, seemingly strong 
enough to drag angels down, and flashing out, even in 
childhood, like fire-fly reflections in darkness, its inborn 
nature and nobility ; emerging at last into manhood’s 
sun, with principles fixed in virtue, and a life emitting 
godlike splendor. 

And we see marked examples of blood and pedi¬ 
gree, showing its supremacy; pursuing, untainted, the 
paths of virtue ; coming into manhood honorable mem¬ 
bers of society, even though that child be the adopted 
charge of villains and vagabonds. 

And cases are not uncommon when children of vile 
and low pedigree, with inherent evil propensities, have 
been adopted into the homes, and surrounded by precept 
and example of the highest and most sterling character ; 
but contrary to all these influences, become essentially 
chips of the old block, with the passions and propensities 
of their parents. 

A certain family in New York City has been traced 
through ten generations, from its beginning in a profes¬ 
sional thief, prostitute, and murderer. Among the mem¬ 
bers of that family, fourteen have been hung, forty-two 
have received life sentences in the penitentiary ; its fe¬ 
male members have been mainly women of the town, and 
there has been found in the entire family scarcely a re¬ 
deeming example ; such is the force of hereditary law and 
early influence. 

Although hereditary qualities are inborn, influences 
are a powerful factor in molding the character of child¬ 
hood, and therefore of manhood. 


m 


SOCIOLOGY. 


In illustration of some of the causes which act upon 
childhood for good or bad, we will take two brothers, 
alike in character and disposition, and suppose them 
reared by persons not their parents. One has the pro¬ 
tection and care of kind, affectionate, Christian people, 
who love and educate their little charge ; on putting 
him to bed, his guardian mother tucks down his covers, 
hears his little prayer, and kisses him with a loving 
“good-night.” He lives surrounded with no lessons of 
hypocrisy, which even the quick perception of a child 
distinguishes at a glance, but surrounded with daily life 
and example of all that is noble in father and mother. 
He beholds the happiness resulting from virtue, and 
the success of honesty, while elsewhere he beholds 
unhappiness, pain, and sorrow following the false and 
selfish, the dishonest and sinful. He learns that honesty 
is the best policy, that it receives confidence and success 
in business, that it ripens into an honored age, serene in 
life and radiant in death. 

This boy is met on rising in the morning wfith a pleas¬ 
ant, “Good morning, my dear; did you sleep well last 
night?” “O yes, thank you, mamma; and I dreamed 
of you, and of the school, and of the teacher, and I was 
so happy.” He is growing into manhood. 

His less fortunate brother is reared in a family of 
cross and ill-tempered vagabonds, who cuff and kick him 
about, box his ears, call him a dirty blockhead and a 
dunce, and send him to bed with malice and hatred in his 
heart. He is long crying himself to sleep ; his little head 
aches between and behind the ears, where the blood goes 
all night long inflaming his passions, while his better nat¬ 
ure lies dormant and unexercised. 


DICKENS-HUGO-CHILDREN. 


413 


These children are forming characters. Can we sup¬ 
pose that the first-mentioned will not be a grander man, 
and a better member of society than his less fortunate 
brother, when he comes into manhood ? 

How powerful for good or evil is the influence of a 
mother during the hours passed in unavoidable seclusion; 
when the affections and mental principles of her child 
can be molded into almost any form by the plastic hand 
of maternal love. 

“ The mother, in her office, holds the key of the soul ; 

She it is who stamps the coin of character, 

And makes the being, who would be a savage, 

But for her gentle cares, a Christian man.” 

What worlds of meaning and of memory are tied up 
in the one word “mother;” coming back to us, e'en in 
grey-headed manhood. Yes, pleasing memories halo the 
word ; it was the first name my own baby lips learned to 
lisp ; it was the first love my boyish heart ever knew. 

“And gentle words that mother would give. 

To tit me to die, and teach me to live. 

She told me shame would never betide, 

With truth for my creed and God for my guide. 

Years rolled on ; but the last one sped — 

My idol was shattered ; my earth-star fled.” 

And when angels took her to their home, her loss was 
the first great sorrow my young heart had ever felt, mak¬ 
ing me to understand a part of the meaning contained, 
and lost, in the one word “mother.” I fain would dwell 
upon the pleasing reminiscences of her individual life. 

But my subject deals, rather, with the word “ mother ” 
in its broad bearings upon humanity ; its love as affecting 


414 


SOCIOLOGY. 


the world's heart; its teachings as affecting the world's 
character ; its influence as affecting the world’s destiny. 

u God is love ; ” this is the sublime declaration of in¬ 
spired sages, the conclusion of reason, and the impulsive 
self-prolonged song of the human heart. 

And his creatures get near him in essence, becoming 
divine, in proportion as they are filled with its force and 
guided by its dictates. Pure love, true love — the dream 
of youth, the cherished reminiscence of age, the poet’s 
song, the flower of holiest sentiments, the source of all 
inspiration, the fire of prophecy, of heroic, divine philan¬ 
thropy, once embodied, and shining still from Calvary’s 
hill ! 

That life which is devoid of love is incomplete, un¬ 
satisfactory, sterile ; nature in anger blots it out, and it 
passes like the shadow of a cloud. 

Love to a man, at best, is but an episode; to a 
woman, the embodiment and history of her life. A thou¬ 
sand distractions divert man : fame, riches, power, pleas¬ 
ure, all battle in his bosom to displace the sentiment of 
love. They are its rivals, not rarely its masters; but 
woman knows not such distractions ; one passion only 
sits enthroned in her bosom ; one only ideal is enshrined 
in her heart; it knows no rival, no successor. 

We speak the language of cold and exact science, 
and not merely of rhetoric and fancy ; they are facts, 
gathered from history, anthropology, psychology. 

The all-absorbing wondrous love of woman is some¬ 
thing man cannot understand ; to him it is an unexplored 
deep ; he sees of it nothing but the rippling water, the 
foam crest at play on its surface. But philosophy looks 
beneath, sinks its plummet and line into the abyss of wa- 


TrPTl 



“The Mother in Her Office Holds the Key to the Soul.” 


[415] 




















































































































































































































































































































































































a mother’s love. 417 

ters. and beholds in woman the creative, stronger sex, 
with a concentration, stability, and power of will to which 
man is a stranger. 

“ God is love ; ” this is the conclusion of philosophy, 
and the sublime utterance of inspired poetry ; and he has 
made woman to possess, in a greater and purer degree 
than any other created beings, this element of his own 
nature. 

God is the creator of the universe ; and he has made 
woman to be another creator ; to her is given the perpe¬ 
tuity, the early training, and the destiny of the race. 

At a mother’s feet, the bent is taken for weal or woe 
which ail future life cannot alter. And is it too much to 
say that the kindly sympathies and swelling affections of 
manhood can be traced to infancy, while clinging on a 
mother’s neck, listening to her songs, her words of coun¬ 
sel and confidence ; when the confiding heart of childhood 
appeals to her in trouble or distress ? Is she not its book 
of life, its book of love, its book of wisdom, its book of 
destiny ? 

Philosophers have analyzed, divines lectured, and 
poets sung of the melody and music of a mother’s love; 
but have any of them caught from its deep foundations 
its nameless, numberless, impassioned sympathies ? 

It follows through all our lives, echoing its counsels 
and precepts, and by the touching melody of its pathos, 
interwoven in our natures and clinging to the heart, com¬ 
pels in the musings of darker hours the eye to flow in 
secret. 

“I am going,” said Washington to his mother, “ to 
fulfill the high destiny lately conferred upon me ; as 
soon as the public business shall have been attended to, 

22 


418 


SOCIOLOGY. 


I shall return.” But here he was interrupted with the 
words of his mother, “You will see me no more, my 
dear son ; the disease which is approaching my vitals 
warns me that I shall not be long of this world ; but 
go, George, fulfill the high destiny Heaven appears to 
consign you ; go, my boy, and may the blessings of that 
Heaven and your mother be with you always.” That 
Fabian brow relaxed from its lofty bearing, that form 
which might have awed a Homan senator, bent beneath 
the swelling flood of unutterable emotions ; there was 
long suspended silence; the orator was the heaving 
bosom and buried head. 

“A good boy makes a good man,” was one of the 
sayings of George Washington’s mother, and in this we 
have the secret of his greatness. 

During Lincoln’s second term of office, accompanied 
by a friend, he visited his mother’s grave ; a great man 
never drew his infant life from a purer or more womanly 
bosom. Here at her grave, where her sensitive heart and 
weary hands had crumbled into dust, and had climbed to 
life again in forest flowers, the great man wept like a 
child : to his friend he exclaimed : “ All that I am and all 
that I hope to be, I owe to my angel mother; blessings 
on her memory ! ” 

Yes, I repeat it ; blessings on the memories of the 
mothers of Washington and Lincoln. 

Yes, blessings on the memory of all the mothers who 
have reared into noble manhood and womanhood their 
children. 

Some of them have spun the yarn and carded the 
wool, tilled the garden and kept the fire, nursed through 
nights of sickness, and kept their babies neat and clean ; 


WHY SHOULD MORTALS BE PROUD? 


419 


sung to them strains which came afresh in manhood ; 
found time in care and constant toil, in nights devoid of 
sleep, to impart rich lessons of virtue ; yes, blessings on 
them, one and all. 

“ Oh, why should the spirit of mortals be proud, 

Like a swift fleeting meteor, a fast flying cloud, 

A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, 

Man passes from life to his rest in the grave. 

“ And we are the same our fathers have been ; 

We see the same sights our fathers have seen ; 

We drink the same stream, and view the same sun, 

And run the same course our fathers have run. 

“Yes, hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, 

Are still mingled together in sunshine and rain ; 

And the smiles and the tears, the song and the dirge, 

Still follow each other, surge upon surge. 

“' T is the wink of an eye, ’t is the draft of a breath, 

From the blossom of health to the paleness of death ; 
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud. 

Oh, why should the spirit of mortals be proud ! ” 


CHAPTER XXXVI 


CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH DEVELOP THE GREAT AND GOOD IN HU¬ 
MAN CHARACTER. 


‘ I know, indeed, the mind that feels the fire 
The muse imparts, and can command the lyre, 

Acts with a force and kindles with a zeal, 

Whate’er the theme that others never feel; 

If human woes her soft attention claim, 

A tender sympathy pervades the frame : 

She pours a sensibility divine, 

Along the nerve of every feeling line , 

But if a deed, not tamely to be borne, 

Fire indignation and a sense of scorn. 

The strings are swept with a power so loud, 

The storm of music shakes the astonished crowd.” 

Discussing as we are the physical, mental, and moral 
creation, this work would be incomplete without some 
reference to the circumstances which develop the great 
and good in human life and character. 

Even as the world itself has been evolved from war 
and turmoil, by a long series of seemingly adverse cir¬ 
cumstances, melted down and agitated with fire, deluged 
with floods, buried in ice, tossed from its base, rolled on 
its axis, its shell broken in pieces like a wafer, only to 
rise out of destruction to a higher plane, to evolve from 
turmoil a grander serenity; so human sympathy, charity, 
nobility, and intellectuality are evolved amid the strife 

and conflict of human avarice and human passion, ex 

f 420 1 



“ Confronted Death Itself in the Heroism of Conscious Duty.” 


[ 421 ] 











































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































■ 

* 




. 

































IHE GREAT AND GOOD IN HUMAN CHARACTER- 


423 


posed to the din and play of evil, and the lightning of 
human craft, purged as it were with fire ; 

Bent but not broken ; 

Withered but not dead, 

it arises from these ordeals to strength and power. 

Disadvantages are often advantages; seeming ills, 
blessings in disguise ; there are birds in the clouds, and 
there are angels above human distresses. 

A large portion of the world’s best and strongest 
men have been nursed and nurtured in poverty; the hand 
of assistance has been their own ; their help has been the 
midnight lamp; such was the history of Shakespeare, 
Blackstone, Galileo, Kepler, Columbus, Harvey, New¬ 
ton, Milton, Voltaire, Hugo, Dickens, Lincoln, Grant; 
their lives are all painful to read ; there are pages in their 
histories which have not been written. 

Such men have battled against conspiracies organ¬ 
ized in pomp ; run the gauntlet of villainous battle-axes 
lifted to kill ; confronted death itself in the heroism of 
conscious duty. 

Shame on you, politicians, those among you pursu¬ 
ing avocations with the venomous tongue of lies, and the 
black-mouthed vomit of calumny. 

Shame on you, newspapers, those among you to be 
bought and sold at a price, to herald the contagion of 
falsehood. 

Shame on you, colleges, those among you making 
no standard of merit or recognition of self-acquired 
knowledge, but selling titles for gain, and fledging 
“ dummies” who have filled the vacuum of an empty 
chair with badges of wisdom. 


424 


CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH MAKE THE MAN. 


Shame on you, churches, those among you lending 
your sacred influence against those who do not affiliate 
with you, in favor of such as are dishonest enough to be 
hypocrites. 

Shame on you, social rings of red tape, those among 
you crushing beneath your feet whomsoever falls in the 
way where you would cover vice, to shield and magnify a 
brother. 

The whole history of genius has been out of the veil 
of your influence ; it has been conceived and nourished 
under the stripes of your power ; it has grown to man¬ 
hood amid the elements of your opposition ; its muscle 
and sinew have been evolved by encounters with you ; and 
the first conclusive proof of its power was when in battle 
it throttled and conquered you ; when for the first time, 
like a whipped dog, you began to pay tribute to a master. 
And that master dying, you cover his grave and his 
memory with flowers, and crown him with the signets 
of a god. 

And yet you fill a place in the order of things. You 
are the fires of the early ages, that made possible our 
beautiful world. You are the floods that developed a 
higher humanity. You are the glaciers that made 
Edenic gardens filled with human purity and human 
happiness. 

The heart of humanity is either crushed or rises in 
proportion to the mountains in its path. You, the strug¬ 
gling weak, count it gain when devils surround ; God is 
with you ; when the sky is dark, a heaven of tenderest 
love is shining above you ; when no hand is near, God’s 
own hand is leading you. 

In the words of Victor Hugo, the lives of nature’s 
noblemen have been lives of u mire, but soul,” of battles, 


THE GREAT AND GOOD IN HUMAN CHARACTER. 425 


defeats, and victories. Hell is not easily conquered, but 
we have the assurance before us that the more desperate 
the contest the more glorious the victory. 

God often casts men of stern stuff into the abyss ; 
and for what end ? — To search its depths ; and from pov¬ 
erty, contempt, pestilence, and suffering, search out the 
good, the just, the noble, and bring back the pearl 
of truth. 

Wealth reclining in luxury, opulence, and ease, 
knows little of this fatal world; placed on high it is out 
of it, out of its pity, out of its sympathy, out of its char¬ 
ity ; it is heartless and without a soul. 

It beholds not the deserted child, the orphan, left 
alone in this immeasurable creation, with the load of an 
unfeeling darkness called society resting upon it, and 
crowding it into the slums, where cold and hungry it is 
left to die. 

It cannot see the form of goodness, truth, and justice 
in the rags of a vagabond ; or the angel of love, devotion, 
sympathy, and purity in the woman’s form whom the 
sirens of fashion have vilified and cast overboard into the 
dark sea. 

O opulence ! let me tell you what to do. As you are 
powerful, be brotherly; as you are great, be tender. 
Look on the picture of humanity, and “do unto others as 
you would that they should do unto you.*' 

“ The quality of mercy is not strained ; 

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath : it is twice blest; 

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes : 

T is mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes 
The throned monarch better than his crown ; 

His scepter shows the force of temporal power, 

The attribute to awe and majesty, 


426 


CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH MAKE THE MAN. 


Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings ; 

But mercy is above this sceptered sway • 

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings. 

It is an attribute to God himself ; 

And earthly power doth then show likest God’s 
When mercy seasons justice." 

Ye great, it is in your power to change the picture 
of human misery; little girls “on the town” at twelve, 
dying at twenty ; the pale faces of widows, with families 
of children, in garrets, sewing eighteen hours a day for a 
meager pittance ; one half of all the families of Christian 
nations crowded into a single room ; with all the modern 
inventions, arts, and mechanics, the great mass of man¬ 
kind bent and deformed from the drudgery of sixteen 
hours a day ; and children of eight, who should be in 
school, or basking in God’s sunlight, toiling in factories 
and mines. And when the mill stops, the mine shuts 
down, the factory ceases to run, they starve ! 

Take heed, O wealth, of the human sea beneath your 
feet ; of the suffering which your avarice compels, of the 
misery and crime which your sordid love of gold aug¬ 
ments ! Society, look beneath your feet, cast your eyes 
down ; and ye rich, pity the poor; ye great, pity the 
small; yes, pity yourselves ! for humanity is in its agony, 
and when the lower part of the trunk dies, your splendors 
topple and fall, the abyss yawns for all. 

Let nations and cities of great name, 

And regions long since desolate proclaim ; 

Nineveh, Babylon, and ancient Rome, 

They speak to the present, and times to come : 

“ Oh. learn from our example and our fate, 

Learn wisdom and repentance, ere too late. ” 

E’en as the ice breaks and disappears when the sun 
comes forth in his spring-couch of gold, refecting genial 


THE GREAT AND GOOD IN HUMAN CHARACTER. 


427 


rays ; so the icy fiber of governments, with their social 
systems of men, resting on a liquid sea of human pas¬ 
sions, breaking into fragments, melt and surge for a time, 
purifying themselves. And to accomplish all this, what 
is necessary ? — One of thy looks, O sun ! one of thy rays, 
O liberty ! 

How greatly to be lamented it is that the great mass 
of mankind, disregarding the warning voice of past gen¬ 
erations coming up from ten thousand graves, still shut 
their eyes and even sacrifice principle, to keep popular 
with the passing crowd upon whom they depend for a 
momentary fame ; but they are not the men whose names 
are written in letters of gold on the immortal page of his¬ 
tory ; they are destined to perish from all remembrance, 
and no trace of them left on earth. 

Be just, and fear not, prompt in the path of every 
duty, forgiving, charitable, kind ; these are the essentials 
of true greatness. 

The philosopher, though chained to earth, may raise 
himself above the world, and lift his towering head to 
the stars, and struggle to grasp the mighty plan of Jeho- 
vah’s universe, with all its moving worlds ; yet if this be 
all, true greatness does not lie here. 

True greatness does not belong to the hero ; the 
laurels he wears were gathered at the cannon's mouth, 
from a soil enriched with human gore, and watered by 
the tears of bereavement. His way to it lay over thou¬ 
sands of his fellow-creatures whose warm hearts had 
ceased to beat; and the music which followed his march 
was the orphan’s wail and widow’s moan ; true greatness 
does not lie here. 

The man of wealth may rear to himself lofty mansions, 
and construct edifices of gold ; he may attain possession 


428 


CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH MAKE THE MAN. 


of spacious lands, and the secret crevices of the mountains 
may open to him their store-houses of gold and metal; 
and railroads, mills, and ships augment his glory, and 
carry the shambles of his traffic into the utmost parts of 
the globe, causing millions to hurrah at his name and 
kneel at his approach ; true greatness does not lie here. 

True greatness consists in something more than 
riches, worldly power, or intellectual attainments ; true 
greatness consists in the lofty aspirations after intellectual 
and moral truths ; and when these are found and cher¬ 
ished, so deep will be the conviction of duty, combined 
with sterling honor, that no fear of frowns, no bribes of 
wealth or splendor, or even hazard of life, or exposure to 
wasting torture, can deter that man from the straight path 
of that duty, or the bold acceptation and promulgation of 
such truth. 

Should any challenge me to point out the example of 
such a man on the page of history, I would point to the 
one perfect example on the sacred page : I would point to 
the Son of Man, in the sublimity of whose life, in the wis¬ 
dom of whose counsels and precepts, and in the heroism 
of whose philanthropy, language is impoverished, all de¬ 
scriptions fail, and eloquence is darkened forever. 

“It is life’s mystery ; the soul of man 
Createth its own destiny of power ; 

And, as the trial is intenser here, 

His being hath a nobler strength in heaven. 

What is its earthly victory ? Press on ! 

For it hath tempted angels. Yet press on ! 

For it shall make you mighty among men ; 

And from the eyrie of your eagle thought. 

Ye shall look down on monarchs. O press on ! 

For the high ones and powerful shall come 
To do you reverence : and the beautiful 


THE GREAT AND GOOD IN HUMAN CHARACTER. 420 


Will know the purer language of your brow, 
And read it like a talisman of love ! 

Press on ! for it is godlike to unloose 
The spirit, and forget yourself in thought; 
Bending a pinion for the deeper sky, 

And, in the very fetters of your flesh, 

Mating with the pure essences of heaven I 
And I would press the lesson, that, when life 
Hath half become a weariness, and hope 
Thirsts for serener waters, go abroad 
Upon the paths of nature, and when all 
Its voices whisper, and its silent things 
Are breathing the deep beauty of the world. 
Kneel at its simple altar, and the God 
Who hath the living waters shall be there ! ” 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

FUTURE OF HUMANITY ON THE EARTH —PROPHECY OF A MILLION 
YEARS —PRESENT CONDITION OF THE INHABITANTS ON THE 
PLANET VENUS. 

“ The light of the moon shall be as the light of the 
Sun ; and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, 

In the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of 
His people, and healeth the stroke of their wound/’ 

In forecasting the future of humanity on the earth, 
let us attempt an ideal description of the people and con¬ 
dition of society existing at the present time on the planet 
Venus ; and afterwards endeavor to analyze the forces 
and evolutions in the long ages of her mighty history, that 
have resulted in her present high intellectual and moral 
attainments. 

“I had a dream which was not all a dream.” 

I saw mighty cities, with ribs of solid steel, temple¬ 
decked and sumptuous with splendor, with walls of 
granite and roofs of marble vaulting up, abounding with 
sculpture, wrought from the most varied and beautiful 
stones. 

Ages of labor and human genius had accumulated 
vast forests of imperishable art. Beneath my feet were 
polished stones. Man had e’en excelled nature in the 
formation of columns of colored glass, china, porcelain, 
and other indestructible, emerald imitating, and diamond 
[430] 



VM ] 


Ideal Scene On The Planet Venus. The Earth Will Occupy The 

Place of and be Like Venus. 
































INHABITANTS OF THE PLANET VENUS. 483 

reflecting transparencies of varied colors, composing the 
material of column and cornice. 

Panoramas and decorations of infinitely varied and 
gorgeous paintings, confused the artificial with the real, 
and pictured the history and philosophy of ages with the 
charms of love, and childhood’s laughter. 

“Palms in clusters, knots of paradise,” blossoming 
flowers, fragrant plants, and evergreen shrubbery, wrapped 
art and grandeur in “isles of summer Eden.” 

Music, responsive to echoing walls, in halls for its 
purpose built, mingled with human voices of all ages. I 
listened motionless, unconscious, wrapped, inspired. All 
the spheres joined in the chorus, with mingled intonations 
of heaven and hell; with interludes of singing birds, 
whispering zephyrs; and requiems of every human pas¬ 
sion rang out, as from the depths of my soul, combined 
with the symphonies of poetry, teaching pathos, sublim¬ 
ity, science, and philosophy. 

Intoxicated with the sumptuous and never-ending 
splendors of the cities, and reeling with the impulse of a 
thousand joys, I found myself conveyed to the country, 
on lightning speed, as if palaces were transported by 
some mystic hand of magic, in the brain of human gods 
controlling the elements. 

Here, in the serene quiet of shady nooks, where . 
winding, dreamy rivers flashed their silver amid hills and 
landscapes of verdure, or mountains of mighty grandeur, 
holding their heads, mantled with clouds, high in the 
eternal sunshine ; I beheld a country tilled and cultivated 
in all its mighty lengths and breadths, and blossoming 
with ripening fruit, and the rich luxuriance of one con¬ 
tinuous garden. 


434 


PROPHECY OF A MILLION YEARS. 


Each individual country home was a paradise of art 
and flowers, where wife and children, father and home, 
with social love, seemed to envelop the spot, with light 
all around it. 

Mechanical inventions had been carried to a state of 
absolute perfection, and people conversed with each other 
in all parts of Yenus, without the aid of telegraph or 
telephone, which instruments had long since been 
abandoned. 

Distance w r as overcome, and lightning means of loco¬ 
motion linked city to city, and brought the country to its 
door, where all joined in social, loving commune. 

All the elements, fire, water, and electricity, were 
harnessed, and directed in obedience to the great brain of 
man, in multitudinous forms of labor, terracing and tun¬ 
neling the mountains, walling and bridging the rivers, 
and fixing rock barriers to ocean’s wave, quarrying the 
hills for metal and stone, macadamizing streets, rearing 
cities, cultivating the soil, or attending flocks. 

Human labor was reduced to the minimum of pleas¬ 
ure, and all alike sought the opportunity of work, and 
wrought for the happiness it gave. Every form of labor 
was performed willingly, lovingly, passionately ; as the 
prima-donna sings, the artist paints, or the mother nurses 
her child. 

I saw that men were free, reveling in the sunlight 
of absolute liberty. And a spirit of emulative pride in 
philanthropy prompted all ; for humanity was no longer 
selfish. 

All men absolutely forget their identities and person¬ 
alities in the love of their fellow-men, and the life and 
object of all was to make others happy. 


INHABITANTS OF THE PLANET VENUS. 


435 


The money-changers no longer existed, with their 
sordid barter and sale and cold avaricious cunning, as on 
the earth, robbing the poor and hoarding treasures of 
wealth, while misery starves. 

I read a motto, and inquiring, was told that it had 
been proclaimed in Venus before earth’s humanity was 
born.- I saw it sculptured in rock, and read it in letters 
of gold, on monuments and temples, and saw its essence 
beaming from every heart : — 


“ It is more blessed to give than to receive.” 


Sunlight w^as free, water was free, and the soil was 
free ; e’en temples and palaces were the common property 
of all; and like separate rays of light, art, invention, 
music, and song, the revenue of labor, and the produc¬ 
tions of the brain of genius, like the sunlight, were the in¬ 
heritance and birthright of all the people. 

Selfishness was unknown, and all alike toiled for the 
general weal and general welfare. 

In the place of the earth’s hierarchy of kings, lords, 
and a wealthy privileged class, with inherited titles or 
acquired caste, extending down to a people of serfs, rest¬ 
ing on a stratum of poverty, misery, and crime; I beheld 
a social hierarchy of men and women, in clustered socie¬ 
ties, reaching from state to kingdoms, and high, exalted 
personages ; for men and women were still emulated and 
loved for their leadership, their genius and their godlike 
qualities, their talents, their inventions, and the boons 
they had conferred on humanity. 

Each individual human being shone forth like a sepa¬ 
rate star or sun, in a mighty galaxy of varied colors and 


436 


PROPHECY OF A MILLION YEARS 


grandeur; and the excelling virtues received the homage 
they deserved. 

Men and women fell with an enthusiastic impulse, 
under the leadership of great chieftains; who not from 
personal ambition, or self-sordid glory — 

“By that sin fell the angels” — 

but raised to power by the universal acclamation of an 
admiring people : who, recognizing the mind and heart of 
a higher order of genius, selected them as their leaders. 

All took their respective places, proudly and lov¬ 
ingly, under the leadership of their chieftains, which ex¬ 
tending from high to low, great to small, constituted a 
republic similar to our own. And all of its teachers and 
leaders were created by the people, out of the people, for 
the people, save that there were no formal elections ; for 
humanity recognized with one accord the ebb and flow of 
talent, the rise and fall of genius, the depth and degree of 
every virtue. And lesser, clustering around greater 
lights, formed orders of varied degrees and reflections of 
coloring, showing itself here in music, there in mechanics, 
here in painting or sculpture, there in agriculture, here in 
mining, there as teachers of children. 

And around leaders, from the centers of clubs ; or 
clubs, clustering around higher centers of brighter lights, 
all men gathered in the occupation and vocation of their 
choice. Thus, great projects were planned and accom¬ 
plished by volunteers, who with enthusiasm took their 
places, and acted their parts in its accomplishment. 

To illustrate the willing leadership among men : In 
a mighty temple of art, I beheld a painting that had been 
wrought by a student without position, but which other 
artists came to admire, and which they recognized as the 



The Venic Age and Millennium : “Every Man under 
His Own Vine and Fig-Tree.” 


[437] 








































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































- 




- 






































INHABITANTS OF THE PLANET VENUS. 


43 ( J 


grandest and most sublime production that the ages had 
wrought. The great painters, therefore, made him their 
chieftain; and in a mighty panorama, the outline of 
which he had drawn, took their places as masters, ac¬ 
cording to their excellence, in superintending the work 
of its individual parts ; while painters of lesser capacity, 
or excelling in the completion of wonderful detail, found 
each his natural place. And this was true in every de¬ 
partment of labor, all men and women occupying the 
place and filling the sphere of their choice. 

All things were the common property of all, and 
absolutely free ; with labor-saving machinery in every 
department perfected, labor was reduced to the mini¬ 
mum ; and the soil yielding its produce in abundance, 
satisfied the needs of all. 

The agriculturist poured the rich and sumptuous har¬ 
vest into the lap of all, and the mill its manufactured 
produce. 

Idleness was unknown ; for while there was no forced 
labor, all sought the occupation of their choice and pleas¬ 
ure ; in this spirit all work was done, all labor performed. 
The artist gave his paintings, richly rewarded if his genius 
gave pleasure and admiring acceptance. So the prima- 
donna sang, the mechanic wrought; and all sought to 
excel, to please ; satisfied if their work gave happiness or 
pleasure to others. 

Like Christ and his disciples, the people of Venus — 

“Had all things in common, and 
Loved their neighbors as themselves /’ 1 

1 Such a system of government, or lack of government, which we have 
assumed to exist on the planet Venus, would be absolutely impossible at 
present on the earth. 

The present governments of the civilized world contain within them 

23 


PROPHECY OF A MILLION Y'EARS. 


uo 


In short, the happiness of all depended on producing 
in others some new pleasure ; and the product of labor 
and of genius sought places of acceptance by a system 
similar to Sisters of Charity, making distributions among 
the people. 

Man and wife were twain, one flesh ; one in love, 
one in mind, one in admiration, sympathy, affection, and 
one in the happy families which clustered around them, 
and cemented every home into one radiating light of 
many colors. 

And girls found their lovers, not like the frightened 
plucking of a distracted bird, but like flowers bending to 
the sun ; love attracted to itself sympathetic love, and 
nature mingled with nature in an adhesion godlike and 
eternal. 

With the absolute freedom and glorious liberty of 
every man, woman, and child under heaven’s wide arch 
of liberty, all took their places and acted their part in the 
universal good. The desire alone to please and render 

elements of progress, and are as high as the general intelligence of the people 
composing them will admit. 

Our own republic, founded by our fathers, who brought to these shores 
the divine right of manhood to every individual, is a monument of wisdom, 
and equal to the broad demands of American enlightenment. 

As long as human passion, vice, and crime continue, with man’s inhu¬ 
manity to man, a government of rigid law, protecting the weak, shielding 
the innocent, providing for the poor, and educating the children, is the shield 
of God to man. 

Whomsoever would attempt to overthrow by force of arms our divinely- 
established institutions of law and order, let them suffer the full penalty of 
such treason. 

Whomsoever desires to make law unnecessary, let him lead a life of 
Christian purity, love, and charity, and spend his thought and labor in doing 
good. And when mankind shall have become imbued with this feeling, gov¬ 
ernments no longer necessary will cease to exist ; until then, let every man — 

“ Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, 

And unto God the things that are God’s.” 


INHABITANTS OF THE PLANET VENUS. 


441 


others happy prompted the orator, the writer, the inventor, 
the scientist, the mechanic, the tailor, the cook, the agri¬ 
culturist, and the teacher. All found their proper spheres, 
and labored for the pleasure it gave to themselves in 
others. 

Art and invention, science and sculpture, poetry and 
music, painting and architecture, medicine and agricult¬ 
ure, rose to a state of absolute perfection. 

Want and poverty had no place in this system. 
Sickness was reduced to a minimum; and mild the pain 
relieved by science and soothed by angels of sympathy. 

And crime,— could it grow in such a soil, or prosper 
in this universal air of kindness and love — a kindness 
that in the earlier ages of Yenus had set up the motto,— 

“ Give to him that asketh thee 

that had covered its temples and monuments with bene¬ 
dictions and blessings on “peace-makers,” the “meek,” 
the “merciful,” the “righteous,” the “pure in spirit;” 
that had written in letters of gold on sculptured stone 
obelisks and altars — 

“ Resist not evil, hut whosoever shall 
Smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to 
Him the other also. And if any man 
Will sue thee at the law and take away 
Thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. 

Agree with thine adversary quickly. 

Return good for evil. Love your enemies. 

Bless them that curse you. Do good 
To them that hate you ; and pray for 
Them that despitefully use you” ? 

Here, in this social system of Yenus, the small were 
great and the great small ; the king was subject, and the 
subject king. O bliss unspeakable ! happiness effulgent! 


U2 


PROPHECY OF A MILLION YEARS. 


my voice rang responsive to the song, Long live the pure, 
the great, the good ! 

A flash of lightning, a shriek of pain, misery’s out¬ 
cry in my ears, guttural tone of demons, the heavy tramp 
of horses, a tumultuous mob, bayonets of armed soldiers 
forcing back a maddened throng, a hoarse command of 
“fire,” rattle of musketry, the cannon’s loud roar, an im¬ 
permeable charge, yells of the infuriated, groans of the 
dying, the heavens on fire with flame and passion, a 
hissing hell of imprecations ! — staring, I awoke ; it was 
all a dream — but hell was here ! 

Making a rapid survey of the scene as an inhabitant 
of Yenus would describe the earth, I beheld Egypt, 
Phenicia, and Greece in surging tides of conquest, peace, 
and war. I beheld Rome, overrun with hordes from the 
north, and struggling against cannibal Huns from the 
south; and Caesar retaking the empire, and pushing his 
victorious columns into Britain. I beheld Paris drunk 
with the world’s first draught of liberty, and mad with 
slaughter, while Robespierre and Louis XYI. are offered 
in the wholesale sacrifice ; Moscow on fire, and Napoleon 
menacing the powers of the world, his legions scattered 
in Waterloo like dry leaves. I beheld Cortez laying 
waste the peaceful civilizations of Mexico ; allied France, 
England, and Turkey bombarding Sebastopol; ^olfe 
climbing the impregnable steeps of Quebec ; Charleston 
wrapped in flames ; the snows of Yalley Forge red with 
liberty’s footsteps, marked in blood ; slavery and its mas¬ 
ter struggling in the wilderness, at Yicksburg and Fort 
Donaldson, and leaving the earth strewn with the corpses 
of a million dead. 

I beheld earth’s humanity, like the tides of the 
mighty sea, tranquil and calm at points between the ebb 














































INHABITANTS OF EARTH VIEWED FROM VENUS. 


445 


and flow, with sunshine and peace in rainbow civiliza¬ 
tions, and light in clouds foreboding tempests ; then the 
impetuous charge, defeat or victory : — a struggle for 
power, for gain, for freedom, for justice ; a seething, 
surging mass of power and oppression, slave and master, 
caste and serf, religion and superstition, capital and 
labor, opulence and starvation, knowledge and ignorance, 
truth and error, purity and crime, light and darkness,— 
all, in one seething pot of fermentation, and working out 
a slow yet inevitable destiny. 

Civilizations may ebb and flow ; France and England 
go back to barbarism, proud Columbia fall into ruin, and 
liberty die while the clamorous multitude shout her name ; 
but civilizations new and brighter, with new, better, and 
broader forms of self-government, will arise on their 
ruins, and out of the ashes of the old. 


“Where now is Britain ? — where her laureled names. 
Her palaces and halls ? — Dashed in the dust. 

Some second Vandal hath reduced her pride, 

And with one big recoil hath thrown her back 
To primitive barbarity. Again, 

Through her depopulated vales, the scream 
Of bloody superstition hollow rings. 

And the scared native to the tempest howls 
The yell of deprecation. O’er her marts, 

Her crowded ports, broods silence ; and the cry 
Of the low curlew, and the pensive dash 
Of distant billows, break alone the void. 

Even as the savage sits upon the stone 
That marks where stood her capitols, and hears 
The bittern booming in the weeds, he shrinks 
From the dismaying solitude. Her bards 
Sing in a language that hath perished ; 

And their wild harps, suspended o’er their graves, 
Sigh to the desert winds a dying strain. 

Meanwhile the arts, in second infancy, 

Rise in some distant clime.” 


PROPHECY OF A MILLION YEARS. 


44 #? 


I will leave unwritten the details of the picture, 
prophesy not the sunshine or the shadow, the desolations, 
revolutions, wars ; new civilizations and glorious nations 
yet to come, ebbing and flowing like tides of the sea; 
emigrations and migrations forsaking and depopulating 
the old, planting and creating the new ; French revolu¬ 
tions,— black nights of debauchery and massacre ; — with 
new experiments of self-government, and slaves planting 
the germs of freedom and turning the desert and the wil¬ 
derness into sculptured gardens of art and science ; with 
glories approaching nearer and nearer the ideal of the 
dream of the planet Yenus. 

We live in a transitional age, an age of shadow, 
compared to what shall be on the earth. The human race 
has but dimly begun. We are but the initial types of 
glorious races yet to come. 

In the struggle of coming ages, ignorance in every 
form shall have disappeared, and its place usurped by the 
mighty of brain and of heart, who shall terrace the 
mountains, wall the rivers, and convert the deserts into 
fertile, blooming plains. 

“The earth shall blossom like a rose,” 

and vegetate with a fertility and beauty now unknown ; 
the seasons will soften, and both their mildness and grand¬ 
eur increase. 

The air and the deep seas will be traversed, and the 
entire history of the past and the future scientifically 
known. 

New and more rapid methods of locomotion and 
communication will be discovered, and the inhabitants of 
Yenus will find means of converse with the inhabitants 


FUTURE OF THE EARTH. 


447 


of earth. Human life will have become greatly elon¬ 
gated, and its pleasures more composite. 

Notwithstanding the general outline of progress in 
the future of humanity, there are dark shadows in the 
horoscope. 

For our world, already old in events, shall witness 
mighty things to come. Let him read Isaiah and the 
prophets, who would understand the science of coming 
events. 

The earth, completing her present tremendous cycle, 
unbalanced in the heaven, shall tremble on new centers of 
motion, overturning on itself from pole to pole, com¬ 
mencing a new and nearer path around the sun. 

“The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard. 

He will shake the heavens, and the earth shall 
Remove out of her place. And there shall be 
Signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, 

And upon the earth distress of nations, with 
Perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring ; 

Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for 
Looking after those things which are coming 
On the earth ; for the powers of heaven shall 
Be shaken. As a vesture shalt thou change them. 

For behold I create a new heavens. 

And the new earth shall remain before me.” 

We have shown in former chapters that the position 
of the earth in reference to the North Star is perceptibly 
changing, and that in the remote future, the earth will 
have reached a position in the heavens so far at variance 
to the forces which gave her axial and orbital motion, that 
the earth’s momentum will be overcome, a new axis es¬ 
tablished, with a new orbit, nearer the sun. 

At this mighty period, not alone the earth, but all 


448 


PROPHECY OF A MILLION YEARS. 


the planets, alike, unbalanced in their attractions, will be 
involved in the vortex of a similar crisis. 

“Yea, once more I shake not the earth only, but 
Also heaven. And the stars of heaven shall fall.” 

All the planets will establish new poles, a new 
equator, and commence new and nearer paths around 
the sun. 

In the night of this terrible crisis, the planet Mercury 
will fall into the sun’s resurrecting fires, Yenus will take 
the place of Mercury, the earth will take the place of 
Venus, Mars will assume the place of the earth, and the 
asteroids the place of Mars, Jupiter the place of the aster¬ 
oids, Saturn the place of Jupiter, Uranus the place of 
Saturn, and Neptune the place of Uranus. 

We have shown in former chapters that such are 
natural consequences in the history of planets ; that all 
planets occupy positions near the sun proportionate to 
their density : leaden planets near the sun, and nebulous 
planets remote from the sun. We have shown that 
planets are steadily evolving from gaseous to solid bod¬ 
ies, and that with such changes, they must take positions 
nearer and nearer the sun, until at last they fall into his 
fires. 

In the night of the mighty convulsion, as explained 
in chapter nine, 

“When he causeth a mighty wind to blow, 

When he sendeth out his waters and they 
Overturneth the earth, when he shaketh 
The earth out of her place like a drunkard, ” — 

in the night of that mighty turmoil, amid the struggle of 
forces and of planets to find an equilibrium, the moon will 


FUTURE OF THE EARTH. 


119 


be drawn closer to the earth, as together it and the world 
assume a position nearer the sun. 

“The light of the moon shall be as the light 
Of the sun ; and the light of the sun 
Shall be sevenfold in the day the Lord 
Bindeth up the breach of his people.” 

In the night of that mighty convulsion, the crust of 
this world will have been broken like a crumbling shell; 
water in the arms of fire, issuing from innumerable vents 
and openings, will darken the air with cinders and ashes ; 
the world wrapped in clouds and the atmosphere dense 
with smoke and vapor, will turn — 

“The sun into darkness, the moon into blood.” 

Chaos and anarchy shall have had its day among the 
stars ; old ocean will sing requiems to entombed cities, 
dead nations, and dead races; frigid cold will gather 
about the antipodes of two new poles, while a tropical 
sun will unloose the bands of arctic ice ; the devastations 
and changes will be the throes and convulsions of a mighty 
birth. After the night will come a new day ; order will 
reign again serene among the stars ; a more beautiful sun 
will smile upon the earth, and send healing in its* beams. 

“When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, 

And lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.” 

The few surviving inhabitants, “the elect” of the 
earth who shall have escaped the earthquake and flood, 
will find themselves transported to a new clime and soil, 
by the new rotary motion of the earth, changing the po¬ 
sitions of former arctic and equatorial regions, as also 
land and sea. 


150 


PROPHECY OF A MILLION YEARS. 


The new conditions and environments surrounding 
the human seed, as it multiplies age by age, will be like 
all transplantings to a more favorable soil; the human 
brain will enlarge, the human heart will develop and un¬ 
fold, humanity will assume a condition so far above the 
present as to exclude the possibility of our forming an 
adequate conception. 

“And righteousness will cover the earth 
As the waters cover the sea. ” 

The geology of this earth is the history of all the 
evolutions, all the changes, and all the past of the earth ; 
and the history of our planet is the history of all planets ; 
first a nebula, then a comet; then a cometary, fiery 
chaos, vapor ; then an age of cooling moisture and fall¬ 
ing granite crystals, forming rock ; next an age of fall¬ 
ing waters, and oceans filled with life ; from the fishes 
came the age of reptiles, and from the reptiles came an 
age of mammals, and from the mammals came the age of 
man : all planets have a history of development, and a 
history of the development of life upon them. In all the 
past, through all the geologic ages, amid all the convul¬ 
sions of nature and the stupendous changes the earth has 
seen, there has been progress. 

Such is the record of all the past, and such will be 
the watchword of all the future “progress.” 

The planet Yenus has seen all the changes of our 
world and one more ; she is in her eighth day, or era, oc¬ 
cupying a position nearer the sun ; consequently the in¬ 
habitants of Yenus are higher, grander, nobler, better, 
purer than we. The planet Yenus is now in the full tide 
and glory of the Christian millennium. 

The history of the evolutions of the planet Yenus, 


FUTURE OF THE EARTH. 


451 


and die progressive changes of her inhabitants, rising 
step by step to the pinnacle of her present glory, is the his¬ 
tory of all planets. 

The earth, now in her seventh day and age, ap¬ 
proaching the eighth, will soon take the place and be 
like Yenus. 

Therefore, the present grandeur and glory of the in¬ 
habitants on the planet Yenus, is the future of the earth. 
In the earth’s eighth era, when she shall have assumed 
the present circle of the planet Yenus, arriving at the 
millennium variously prophesied in the Bible,— 

“The old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, 

Shall have been bound for a thousand years. 

He shall deceive the nations no more till the 
Thousand years be fulfilled. And they lived 
And reigned with Christ a thousand years.” 

The period of a thousand years must not be construed 
literally in the exact number, but like numerous similar 
symbols in the Bible, it expresses an indefinite period of 
time, covering the whole Yenic age,— or day,— when 
the earth shall occupy the place of Yenus, moving in the 
present circle of Yenus around the sun, a period of time 
which, in the ninth chapter of this work, from astronomic 
and geologic reckonings, was shown to embrace the long 
period of perhaps six hundred thousand years. 

This mighty period of human happiness will roll into 
eternity, when other stupendous convulsions shall befall 
the earth, reaching the climax in her orbit around the 
sun, of an impossible ellipse ; the earth shall again be 
shaken from her foundations, overturned on her axis from 
pole to pole ; the crust of the earth will be again broken 
and distorted, as she assumes the position and circle of 
the planet Mercury, moving in close proximity to the sun. 


452 


PROPHECY OF A MILLION YEARS. 


At this second crisis of the future, the planet Venus will 
be precipitated into the sun, and all the outer planets 
will take steps of involution, to occupy positions nearer 
the sun. 

The crust of the earth shall be broken like a crum¬ 
bling shell; the Venic civilizations will go out in a night; 
the grand cities, in all their beautiful sculpture and ac¬ 
cumulated art, will be enveloped with earthquake ddbris, 
and the smoke and ashes of a thousand volcanoes ; human 
beauty and health will diminish and disappear; art and 
science become forgotten, and language lose its meaning, 
while humanity totters blindly to the abyss which swal¬ 
lows all. The Revelator, referring to this downfall of 
humanity after the millennium or Venic age, uses the fol¬ 
lowing language: 

“Power shall be given unto the sun to scorch men with fire. 

Scorched with great heat, men shall blaspheme God. 

Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall 

Go out to deceive the nations, and gather them to battle.” 

At this period, after the millennium, or Venic age, 
the earth will occupy the present circle and position of 
Mercury, in which condition human life, still existing, 
will labor under a thousand dwarfing influences, not only 
from the heat occasioned by the earth’s proximity to the 
sun, weakening muscular activity and brain tissue, but 
the moon, now falling age by age towards the earth, shall 
at this period be precipitated upon it, which event is thus 
described in Revelation: 

“And I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth, 

As it were a great mountain burning with fire. 

Fire mingled with blood was cast upon the earth. 

And the name of the star was called wormwood.” 


































-11 Kfc' ; " 

































■ 














FUTURE OF THE EARTH. 


455 


•The moon, with a terrible momentum, will break 
through the earth’s crust into the bottomless pit of central 
fire. A third part of the earth’s inhabitants will be de¬ 
stroyed, and the balance will struggle against poisonous 
and enervating influences, which, although detrimental to 
man, will be productive of a bountiful vegetation. Spon¬ 
taneous tropical fruit will supply man, without an effort, 
with the necessary food for subsistence, as enervated and 
enfeebled man lives again in the atmosphere of base pas¬ 
sion, a stunned savage, reflecting but a feeble image of 
the high, exalted condition he once enjoyed. 

The long period of human blindness and darkness 
shall have finished its course, and a final convulsion, 
caused by the changing positions of the planets, shall 
precipitate the earth into the seething fires of the sun. 
This final catastrophe, when the earth shall fall into the 
sun, is described by the Kevelator in the following 
language: 

“An angel took up a stone, and cast it into the sea, 

Saying, Thus with violence shall Babylon 1 be thrown down. 

And a third part of the sun was smitten. A woman 
Clothed in the sun, and the moon under her feet. 

The devil was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, 

And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. 

And death and the grave delivered up the dead which 
Were in them ; and the sea gave up the dead which were in it, 
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, 
Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision. 

The earth finally precipitated into the resurrecting 
fires of the sun, and dissolved with fervent heat, other 
planets will assume her former position in the heavens, 

1 See picture of seven days, or seven mountains, on which the world has 
sat — double meaning. 


456 


PROPHECY OF A MILLION YEARS. 


taking positions step by step nearer the sun, at last fol¬ 
lowing the earth into his fires. Each and all of the outer 
planets shall one by one, after the earth, fall into the sun ; 
until they have all been gathered into his bosom. The 
Revelator speaks of these outer planets as “fowls,” in the 
following language : 

“ I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried 
With a loud voice, saying to all the fowl that fly 
In the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves 
Together unto the supper of the great God.” 

Following the earth, each and all the planets shall 
share her fate and glory, plunging at last into the sun’s 
resurrecting fires. But more of immortality in the follow¬ 
ing chapters. 

Turning from the consideration of the things which 
will come to pass in the tremendous future, to the present 
on the earth with its prospects, infinite periods lie before 
us in the march of progress . 1 

Humanity is in the early dawn of its destiny, the 
cradle of its manhood ; all the present is progress, all the 
future, hope. 

Man, thy capacities are angelic, thy nature is divine ! 
the star of thy redemption is in the horizon of thy destiny, 
and rays of a new liberty, a new charity, and a new love 
are awakening in the hearts of men, and prophesying the 
coming splendor of a new day, when the sun in his full¬ 
ness shall appear, and mists and shadows disappear in 
the coming brightness and glory! And this the song 
of coming generations : — 

1 We have purposely evaded the doctrinal subject of Christ’s second ad¬ 
vent, the first resurrection, and numerous important questions, not wishing to 
trespass on the sacred ground where various ohurehcs hold different opinions. 



THE EARTH AT LAST WILL FALL INTO THE SUN. [457] 
































FUTURE OF THE EARTH. 


459 


We will raise the cry of progress, forward, upward, shall we range. 
We, the coming brain and sinew, must evolve a higher change ; 

We will prove the world in error ; and when our palms are won. 
Shall our course be wider, deeper than the course our fathers run : 

For we ’ll teach a purer justice, higher lift the sacred truth, 

Wage a greater war ’gainst falsehood, pity more the human brute ; 
We shall sing of purer visions, strike a deadlier blow at hate, 

Place the man above the gold-bag, and the good above the great. 

We shall closer guard the helpless, dearer hold each childish grace, 
Gentler be to fallen kindred, hapless victims of our race. 

Deeper shall we love, and purer ; stainless must that passion be, 
Nearer to the dreamer’s ideal, — boundless bliss in purity. 

We’ll revive again Christ’s precepts, though a church corrupt decline ; 
Hold pure hearts his only temples ! teach again his truths divine. 
From the shield of vampire avarice, draining human heart and vein ; 
From the mask of craven falsehood, we will snatch his sacred name. 

Doubt not, then, kind grey-haired doubters, we ’ll not wreck all you 
have made ; 

Progress will not halt or linger, she will not be stopped or strayed ; 
Progress forth, from night and chaos, rolled this teeming world apace ; 
Progress onward, still shall bear it ; raise still yet the human race. 


/ 


CHAPTER XXXVII. —Continued. 


PAST AND FUTURE OF JERUSALEM, WITH BIBLICAL PROPHECIES IN 
REFERENCE TO THE END OF OUR AGE — THE EARTH TO AS¬ 
SUME A NEW AXIS AND ORBIT, AND ENTER UPON THE VENIC 
AGE, OR MILLENNIUM. 

How true has come the fulfillment of biblical proph¬ 
ecy in reference to the destruction of Jerusalem, and the 
dispersal of the Jewish people : 

“ Zion shall become as a plowed field. 

See ye the building of the temple ; 

There shall not be left one stone upon 
Another, that shall not be thrown down.” 

Unhappy city ! During all the period of her ancient 
glory, the nations had plotted to rob and dethrone this 
queen city of the earth. Again and again had her streets 
been deluged with human gore. Her spacious columns 
rise heavenward, but again and again they fall. Her 
temples and palaces, adorned with sculpture, reflecting 
the wealth of precious stones, embellished with gold, by 
the sway of empire and the torch of incendiary disappear 
and reappear out of the ashes of her destruction. 

David, marching against Jerusalem with an army.of 
two hundred and eighty thousand men, captures it, and 
makes it his capital. Sennacherib, the Napoleon of the 
Assyrians, enslaving nations at his chariot wheel, having 
made two hundred thousand captive slaves in one cam¬ 
paign, Phenician cities kneeling at his feet, Egypt trem¬ 
bling at the flash of his sword, comes upon Jerusalem, his 
[460] 


JERUSALEM. [461] 






















































































































































































































































































































































































SIEGES OF JERUSALEM. 


\ P o 

4 b o 

final Waterloo, leaving in her streets and without her 
walls, a hundred, fourscore, and five thousand dead. 

Jerusalem was next attacked, overwhelmed, and de¬ 
vastated by Shishak, king of Egypt, and robbed of the 
riches accumulated by Solomon. 

Next came the armies of Babylon under Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar, who charging and repulsed, finally captured it, 
and carried oft a plunder such as no other city ever had 
to yield ; and ten thousand of her citizens trudge oft into 
Babylonian bondage. Again the armies by night go 
through a breach of the Jerusalem wall, and the morning 
finds them in full possession. 

Next, Pompey lays siege to Jerusalem, and with bat¬ 
tering rams crushing against the wall, and catapults hurl¬ 
ing rocks upon the people, takes the city, leaving twelve 
thousand dead, and Jerusalem in the clutch of the Roman 
war eagle. 

Next Titus, seventy years after the Christian era, 
with his tenth legion on the mount of Olives, and giant 
pendulums arranged to swing great boulders against the 
wall and into the city ; and miners tunneling under ground 
make great galleries of beams and timbers, which set on 
fire, tumble great masses of houses and human beings into 
destruction and death ; a soldier, contrary to orders, hurls 
a torch into the temple, and it is consumed. Pompey takes 
ninety-seven thousand prisoners ; and Josephus says one 
million one hundred thousand lay dead. 

Again in the twelfth century come the Crusaders 
against Jerusalem and the Mohammedan forces under 
Saladin. Against him came the armies of Europe, Eng¬ 
land, France, and combined Christendom, marching 
through fevers, plagues, and battle, charges and suffer¬ 
ings, as intense as the world ever saw ; and the carnage 

24 


•164 


PAST AND FUTURE OF JERUSALEM. 


began. The battering rams rolled, the catapults swung, 
the swords thrust, and the battle raged. The Crusaders 
mount the wall, a cross on every shoulder ; having taken 
the city, they march bareheaded and barefooted to what 
they suppose to be the Holy Sepulcher. 

But Saladin retook the city, and for the last four 
hundred years it has been in the possession of the Otto¬ 
man government — the Turks. 

These religious crusades filled the whole period of 
the eleventh and twelfth centuries with horror, in which 
nine campaigns were directed by religious zealots, sub¬ 
sisting on pillage and plunder, bearing aloft the red flag of 
massacre. So terrible was the carnage on the taking of 
the city by Godfrey, that the horses of the Crusaders who 
rode up to the Mosque of Omer were knee deep in the 
stream of blood. Infants were seized by the feet, and 
dashed against the wall, and the Jews were all burned 
alive in their synagogue. In the midst of these horrors, 
Godfrey, bareheaded and barefooted, clothed in a pure 
white robe, entered the church of the Sepulcher, and of¬ 
fered his religious devotions at the tomb. On the fol¬ 
lowing day, the captives were brought out and slain, and 
then followed a general massacre, in which the hewed 
and hacked bodies of dead men, women, and children, 
lay piled in massive heaps. 

During these two hundred years, probably four mill¬ 
ion people perished as the direct result of these crusades ; 
not alone soldiers, but mobs of men, women, and chil¬ 
dren, thirty thousand boys and girls led by the lad 
Stephen, and twenty thousand from Germany under the 
lad Michael, which ended in death and the Mohammedan 
slave market to them all. The world contains no darker 

































































THE CRUSADES. 4(17 

picture than this which was at every step stimulated with 
ghost stories and holy lies ; and by ingenious devices the 
dead were made to take part in the religious ceremonies, 
and the white forms of Abraham and the prophets, bear¬ 
ing aloft the cross, led the armies. To slay a Turk or a 
Jew was absolvence from all sin, and to die on holy land 
was the sure and straight road to heaven. 

Devastated by war and dispersed by bad government, 
Jerusalem has gone back from a city of two million in¬ 
habitants to a tumble-down, deserted village of seven 
thousand souls. In truth, on the very spot where stood 
her ancient edifices and temples, amid valleys underlaid 
with broken architecture, over mounds of ruin, on the 
ashes and dust of her ancient glory, can be seen to-day 
Mohammedan gardens and spacious plowed fields. 

But this same Jerusalem is again being rebuilt. Since 
the edict of Russia expelling all Jews from her domain 
and the commencement of a railroad through Palestine and 
the sacred city, the Jews are flocking to this their ances¬ 
tral capital, by thousands, and the city puts on an air of 
modern, inviting prosperity. 

When we reflect that Turkey, so long ranked as a 
great, rich, and invincible power, is rapidly becoming a 
bankrupt nation, tottering to her inevitable fall, mort¬ 
gaged through England to the Rothschilds and the mon¬ 
ied powers of the world, compelled to pay tribute, im¬ 
poverished, and taxed to the uttermost, with English 
collar and chain already forged, and Russia jealous of 
British dominion, armed and equipped for war ; Ger¬ 
many and France allied on either side, and awaiting the 
signal,— what shall be the predictions and future of this 
new Jerusalem ? 


468 


FAST AND FUTURE OF JERUSALEM. 


Already the Jews have purchased large tracts of land 
in Palestine, and are re-colonizing the country by thou¬ 
sands. The signs of the times seem to point to the possi¬ 
ble fulfillment of the predictions of Daniel, Amos, Ezekiel, 
Isaiah, and the prophets in the re-establishment of Jewish 
authority, and the restoration and rebuilding of this 
ancient Jerusalem. 

Stop here, and see a truth of the proof of prophecy. 
Jeremiah tells us that — 

“Jerusalem shall be rebuilt through ashes.” 

Even now, in that portion of the city where new buildings 
are being rapidly constructed, the earth consists of great 
mounds of the ashes of wood and bones that have accu¬ 
mulated through the centuries. 

“The city shall be built to the tower of Hananeel 
Unto the gate of the corner, and the whole valley 
Of the dead bodies of the bones and of the ashes.” 

Explorers have been digging, and found the corner¬ 
stone of Solomon’s Temple seventy-five feet below the 
surface. It is fourteen feet long, and three feet eight 
inches high, and near it an earthen jar, supposed to con¬ 
tain the oil of consecration, embedded with the corner¬ 
stone ; also a signet ring, inscribed with the word “Hag- 
gai,” to which he refers in his prophecy, saying, U I will 
make thee as a signet.” Thus saith your prophets, O 
Israel! — 

“ In the latter years thou shalt come into the land 
That is brought back from the sword, and is 
Gathered out of many people against the mountains 
Of Israel. Thou shalt ascend, and come like a storm 
Out of the nations, and shall dwell safely in thee. 

The sons of strangers shall build up thy walls ; thy sons 
Shall come from far, and thy daughters. The Gentiles shall 


BIBLICAL PROPHECIES. 


469 


Come unto thee. They shall build the old wastes, 
r l hey shall repair the desolations of many generations. 

A our sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your old men 
Shall dream dreams, and your sons see visions. 

The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall Jostle 
One against another in the broad ways ; they shall 
Seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings. 

The chariots shall be with flaming torches, in the 
Day of his preparation. Who are these that fly as 
A cloud 1 and as the doves to their windows ? 

Therefore prophesy, and say unto Gog, In that day 
When my people dwell safely, thou shalt not know it. 

There shall come out of the north, riding upon horses 
Against my people Israel, a mighty army. 

It shall be in the latter days ; Gog and Magog, 

Gomer and Lamer, Persia, Ethiopia, and Lybia. 

In that day I will show wonders in the heavens. 

And on the earth blood and fire and pillars of smoke. 

I will remove far off from you the northern army. 

There shall be a great shaking; the mountains shall 
Be thrown down. I will rain upon the earth 
Great hailstones, fire, and brimstone ; the fishes of the sea 
And the beasts of the field, every creeping thing, 

Shall shake, when he shaketh the earth out of her 
Place, and it reels to and fro like a drunkard. 

A great whirlwind shall turn the earth upside down, 

With a great earthquake, such as was not since men 
Were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, 

And so great. He will shake the heavens and the earth. 

The sea, and the dry land ; and the slain shall be at 
That day, from one end of the earth to the other. 

1 England’s poet philosopher, Tennyson, in his “Locksley Hall,” makes 
similar prediction : — 

“ For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, 

Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonders that would be ; 

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, 

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales ; 

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew 
From the nations’ airy navies, grappling in the central blue ; 

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, 

With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunder storm; 
Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled, 

In the parliament of man, the federation of the world.” 


470 


PAST AND FUTURE OF JERUSALEM. 


He rebuketh the sea and maketh it dry ; yet shall 
The waters not go over the earth. The mountains 
Shall depart, and the hills be removed. The beasts 
Groan, the herds of cattle are perplexed ; for fire hath 
Devoured the pastures, and flame burned all the trees. 

The rivers are broken and dried up ; the people shall 
Be pained ; all faces shall gather blackness. The earth 
Shall quake. He will smite the great house with breaches 
And the little house with clefts. The sun, the moon, and stars 
Shall withdraw their shining ; and stars shall fall from heaven. 
Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field. Be glad, ye children 
Of Zion, and rejoice ; for ye shall eat in plenty and be 
Satisfied. Sorrow and mourning shall fle*e away. 

Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause it to bring forth ? 

The wolf and the lamb shall feed together. I will gather 
All nations and tongues, and the new earth shall 
Remain before me. I will comfort the waste places, 

And make the wilderness like Eden. The light of the 
Moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light 
Of the sun shall be sevenfold in the day the Lord 
Bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth their wound. 
For as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven 
To water the earth and make it bring forth and bud, 

That it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 

So shall my word be. Ye shall be led forth with peace. 

The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you 
Into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap 
Their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, 
And instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree 
I will extend peace like a river, and the glory of the 
Gentiles like a flowing stream. The voice of weeping 
Shall be no more heard, or the voice of crying ; for the 
Child shall die a hundred years old. Violence shall 
No more be heard in the land ; wasting nor destruction 
Within its borders. They shall build houses and inhabit 
Them. They shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. 
They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain. 

I will cause righteousness to go forth as brightness, 

And salvation as a lamp that burneth. And I will 
Make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, 

And all thy borders of precious stones. Thy children 
Shall be taught of the Lord, and great thy righteousness.” 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 


THIS UNIVERSE IS THE MANIFESTATION OF GOD’S THOUGHT — THE 
FINITE IN THE INFINITE — MIND AND MATTER. 

“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” 

It will be remembered that in the opening chapter 
of this book we evaded the discussion of the fundamental 
constitution of matter. Let us now, from the standpoint 
of logic, take a new view of the creation . 1 

We are forced to the conclusion, in the study of the 
human mind and its relation through the senses to ex¬ 
ternal things, that this mysterious and wondrous universe 
is not a mechanism of dead matter, but an emanation from 
the mind of an infinite and eternal “ Ego and that the 
human senses are the simple avenues of its own divine 
and reflex consciousness. 

We can doubt the existence of a universe of dead 
matter, but we cannot doubt the existence of a universe of 
our thoughts — a universe which appears to be — the 
universe which we think is. We can doubt the philosophy 
of atheistic materialism, but we cannot doubt the reality 
of an ideal universe existing in and through our senses. 

Even though the universe be an hallucination, the 
hallucination is a reality. Even though our senses deceive 
us, there is truth in the illusion. 

1 If this chapter is not a demonstration, then tear up your logics, your 
arithmetics, vour algebras, and your geometries—they are all fallacies. 

[471 | 


472 THE FOOL HATH SAID, THERE IS NO GOD. 

We think, therefore thought is. We think a uni¬ 
verse, therefore a universe is. 

Logic cannot get beyond the platform that this uni¬ 
verse is a thought; my thought, perchance your thought, 
and the thought of millions ; perchance its own thought, 
God’s thought, from whose infinity the finite springs. 

Let us explore the depths of human reason and hu¬ 
man consciousness, and from the bottom build up step 
by step a positive philosophy. 

We are the creators of our sleeping dreams, and 
worlds which we people with fantastic beings ; and it has 
been argued that life is another dream, and that the uni¬ 
verse is the creation of our thought. We answer, This 
reasoning would make the “ me 71 the all of existence; 
but by the limit of my thought I know that I am not the 
all; by my ignorance that my thought does not contain it 
all; by my imperfection that I am not perfect; by my be¬ 
ginning that I am not eternal; and this proves that the 
universe is not the creation of my thought, but the 
creation of an infinite, omniscient, perfect, and eternal 
Thought. 

Infinity, Perfection, Omniscience, and Etemality are 
declared as correlatives of my imperfection, ignorance, 
mortality, and finitude. 

There is therefore a mentality which is Infinite, Om¬ 
niscient, Perfect, and Eternal, upon whose reality our 
existence depends, in which ours is included, and from 
the fullness of whose infinity, finite millions are evolved. 

We are limited, there is an Unlimited ; we are weak¬ 
ness, there is an All of power ; we are ignorant, there is a 
Perfect; we are transient, there is an eternal; we are 
finite, there is an Infinite. By the correlations and antip- 


THE UNIVERSE IS A DREAM. 


473 


odes of all things, the existence of one depending on the 
existence of the other, the above propositions are demon¬ 
strated. 

We thus demonstrate that if the universe is a dream, 
it is the dream of an Existence whose mentality is the an¬ 
tipodes of our mentality ; that the universe is not created 
by our limited, finite thought, but by an omniscient, per¬ 
fect, and eternal Thought. 

We do not originate the thoughts which come to us 
through our senses in the form of stars and hills, land¬ 
scapes, flowers, oceans, plains, and the pleasing phe¬ 
nomena of surrounding nature ; these thoughts of ours 
spring from the mind of the “ All-embracing Ego ; ” they 
are the real, and we are the shadow ; through our senses 
they become conscious of themselves in us ; they are the 
creators, and we are the created ; the finite rests on the 
bosom of the Infinite. 

Though the universe be the dream of God, we bask 
in that dream, not as ghostly, phantom shadows, but as 
the fixed outgrowth of his just and eternal attributes. 

Though the universe be the manifestation or mate¬ 
rialization of God’s attributes, we rest upon substance 
and essence in his substance and essence ; the finite with 
the Infinite, changing yet eternal. 

We are leaves on the vines of God’s thought. His 
thought embraces and encircles our thought. We do not 
rest on our own reality, but on his reality ; his self-exist¬ 
ent, eternal thought finds a transcient, ephemeral echo in 
our transient, ephemeral life. 

We are phenomena of independent consciousness 
bubbling up in the waters of eternal life. 

“ In God we live, move, and have our being.” 


474 THE FOOL HATH SAID, THERE IS NO GOD. 

Our thought hid away in the depths of his thought alone 
exists ; his consciousness clothed with multitudinous, sen¬ 
suous forms, flows through me, and through the whole uni¬ 
verse — here, meditating within this brain ; here, stream¬ 
ing through my veins; there, pouring its abundance into 
tree, shrub, or flower; there, wafting onward whole fleets 
of stars. 

Dead, inert matter has disappeared from nature, but 
in its stead there rushes up the bright, everlasting flood of 
life and power. 

In His mind, and through our minds alone, has he 
created the universe ; in his mind, through the fixed 
manifestations of his eternal attributes ; in our minds as a 
finite phenomenon of his mind ; through our senses as a 
transient phenomenon of his consciousness ; and in our 
activity as the manifestation of his will, has he created in 
us, and around us, a relative universe. 

In the light of 4 ‘ pure reason, ” time, space, and dead 
matter have disappeared, save only as relative ideas. 

All things are relative ; compared with the vastness 
of the stars, our world becomes a minute dot; measured 
with the possibilities of the microscope, a drop of water 
becomes a stupendous world ; compared to the period of 
the life of fleeting insects, whose years of birth and death 
are gone in a second, the period of our mortal life is in¬ 
conceivably long : measured by the stupendous cycles of 
ages in the evolutions of a planet, our life is but a fleeting 
breath. 

Time, therefore, like space, is but a relative idea; 
and dreams, embracing long, laborious years, are often 
the product of but a moment’s sleep. And every phase 
of what we call actual existence is a thing of the mind 


MATTER IS THOUGHT-GOD’S THOUGHT. 475 

alone ; received in the senses, as a phase of reflection from 
that Mind in whom we exist. 

Our ideas of weights and measurements, lights and 
shadows, forms, colors, etc., are necessarily relative, hav¬ 
ing no fixed reality save from the standpoint of human 
senses, and the scenes which environ them, as phases of 
the Infinite. 

There are abnormal conditions of the human eye 
which transform and create colors, changing red to green, 
or white to blue, and creating constant illusions. 

All objects grow small in the distance, and increase 
in size as we approach them, remaining large or small in 
proportion to the convexity of the human eye, or the 
capacity of sense in the beings taking cognizance of 
them. 

The whole aspect of this universe could have been 
changed, as will probably be the case in that which we 
call death or resurrection, by the simple modification or 
change of the human senses. 

We carry within our own being, in our faculties and 
senses, like the plates of a magic lantern, the measure of 
that universe in which we live, from the divine reality of 
which our nature has been evolved, and from which in¬ 
finite sources we read the possibilities of infinite changes 
in mortal or immortal human development. 

We each carry with us and within us, in our senses 
and faculties, the imagery of our existence, with all the 
lights and shadows of the spheres we inhabit, pitching 
above and around us dark tints of evil and ignorance, or 
decking wide landscapes with grandeur, and filling every 
detail with precious gems. 

The measure and quality of a man is the measure and 


476 THE FOOL HATH SAII), .THERE IS NO OOD. 

quality of his universe, the good or evil, heavens or hells, 
which radiate from his soul, and in which he lives. 

The world is beautiful to him whose nature is beauti¬ 
ful ; who, looking out through what is within him, beholds 
everywhere the mirage of his own nobility. But he 
whose thought is full of vile passion, paints the tent in 
which he lives with the shadows of his own deformity, 
and creates within and around him a hell of distortion, 
loathsomeness, and pain. 

“My kingdom is within you,” 

was the pointed language of the Master; “blessed are 
the” virtues / for they create within you, and around you, 
heavens of everlasting life. 

We would not be understood as attempting to over¬ 
throw the reality of things. We know that creation ex¬ 
ists, and that we are its components. We admit the 
evidence of our senses and of consciousness, but we know 
of no means of going beyond their testimony. If under¬ 
lying what we see, taste, or touch, there exists a some¬ 
thing more material, which we cannot see, taste, or touch, 
its existence must remain forever beyond the comprehen¬ 
sion of human senses and human consciousness. 

We know nothing of a universe save that which is 
proclaimed in our senses and by our thoughts, and we 
have shown that our thoughts exist independent of us, in 
the mind of the “ All-embracing Thought.” 

This wondrous universe, peopled with wondrous be¬ 
ings, is the simple, and to us physical, manifestation of 
God’s consciousness, supported by his fixed and eternal 
thought, resting on his reality ; from the infinite ocean of 
his thought all concrete, individual existences arise, and 


IN GOD WE HAVE OCR BEING. 


477 


this changing panorama of the universe resolves itself into 
unity. 

There is but one reality, self-existent, eternal, and 
that is God; being above all beings, whom no one can 
know, and no finite knowledge conceive ; well may we 
lift our thoughts to thee, for we can think only in thee. 
In thee all the problems of being are solved and harmony 
reigns. U I veil my face before thee, and lay my finger 
on my lips.” 

An hypothesis which does not admit of demonstration 
is unworthy of acceptation. The reality of the universe 
admits of demonstration ; but it admits of demonstration 
only as an existence of sensation, thought, and conscious¬ 
ness. We rely implicitly upon the testimony of sensation, 
thought, and consciousness ; by which, and through which, 
we prove, not alone our own existence, but the existence 
of infinitudes of sensation, thought, and consciousness, 
above and beyond. 

We proclaim the reality of things ; but reasoning on 
the why, whence, and wherefore, we discover that we are 
finite emanations in the Infinite. 

Dead, inert matter has disappeared, but its place 
is filled with the attributes of eternal thought and con¬ 
sciousness : materialism, the base of all atheism, has fallen, 
and God appears in majesty and power ; e’en though by 
our senses — 

“We see through a glass darkly.” 

Barriers to a full knowledge of the Infinite are these 
finite human senses ; these, alone, constitute our human¬ 
ity, intervening between us and God. 

An unknowm and unknowable substratum has been 
assumed to underlie our ideas and conceptions of matter, 


478 THE FOOL HATH SAID, THERE IS NO GOD. 

it something supporting realities, to which accidents ad¬ 
here ; this is an imaginary pigment, worse than useless — 
a pernicious doctrine, and the base of atheism. 

If you understand by matter that which is seen and 
touched and is proclaimed by the senses, like the objects 
seen, touched, and tasted in a dream, then we say matter 
exists ; but if you understand by matter a something 
underlying thought and sensation, which cannot be seen 
or touched, of which the senses cannot, do not, inform 
you, then we deny the existence of matter. 

We must confine ourselves to the evidence of the 
senses, and that which impresses the senses are thoughts 
or things themselves. 

We know that creation exists, but it exists in the 
mind and through the senses, according to its environ¬ 
ments, as a phase of that Mind whose thought is thus 
reflected, in the infinite ocean of whose thought we think, 
and in whose life we live. 

The human mind cannot possibly go beyond its own 
ideas ; it must stop at the limit of the idea ; it may weigh 
and measure, analyze and describe an object; but the 
weight and measurement, analysis and description of that 
object, is the weight and measurement, analysis and de¬ 
scription of its own ideas only ; and these ideas of objects 
are the objects themselves. 

Science may multiply names, and classify its endless 
nomenclature under the headings of various sciences, but 
its names are names of ideas only, its classification a 
classification of ideas only. 

Science cannot get beyond the platform that this 
universe is a universe of ideas, that this sublime pano¬ 
rama is a panorama of ideas ; and here science beholds 


THE UNIVERSE IS GOD’S IDEA. 


479 


God. This universe is a thought, an emanation from 
mind, the simple idea of God. 

Ideas eternal constitute actual existence ; the thought 
of Divinity is eternal reality; and eternal reality the 
supreme Divinity. 

How sublime becomes the picture, how the mind 
bends in adoration when it discovers that this universe is 
God — his thought animate with form, and clothed with 
reality ! 

Above, see the mighty constellations of moving 
stars; around, see the landscapes, oceans, flowers, the 
changing seasons, the perpetual phenomena of life, dying 
yet renewed forever; all upheld by the fixed and immut¬ 
able attributes of God ; the manifestations of his fixed, 
eternal, and unswerving will; resting on the bosom of his 
consciousness. 

Skepticism has been the invincible giant, the insati¬ 
able destroyer ; he has strewn the cemetery of the past 
with corses of dead religions; at his appearance the 
Christian religion trembles in its strength. 

Idealism has met skepticism on the fair field of 
science, grappled with him under the black flag of con¬ 
flict, and yonder lies the prostrate giant. 

Idealism would snatch from the mouth of Ingersoll, 
“An honest God is the noblest work of man," and hurl 
it back as the unanswerable evidence of his existence. 

From the sublime poetry of Plato down to Ger¬ 
many’s great philosopher, Kant, theology has ever taken 
refuge behind idealism when waging successful war upon 
its implacable foe. 

The great Frenchman, Descartes, beaten by the 
skeptics, unable to prove the reality of things, unable to 


480 


THE FOOL HATH SAID, THERE IS NO GOD. 

prove his own existence, from the standpoint of material 
philosophy, finally hurled back the crushing yet idealistic 
syllogism, 

‘ ‘ Gogeto ergo mm. ” 

(I think, therefore thought is.) 

I think, therefore I am. Infinity and perfection are de¬ 
clared as correlations of my imperfection and finitude. 
God therefore exists. My doubts of him prove him, 
which when I have considered, demonstrate his existence 
as absolutely as my own. 

What matters it to science if it be proven that ideas 
alone exist, if that which we call matter is proven to be 
eternal thought? Phenomena will remain the same, 
mathematics will calculate, logic will analyze, mechanics 
combine, chemistry divide, philosophy contemplate, art 
create, and science classify. A universe as we see it, as 
it presents itself to our senses—a universe of ideas re¬ 
maining the picture, is unchanged. • The rose will unfold 
its leaves, determine its form, impart its color, and diffuse 
its fragrance ; viewing it as an idea,— its own idea — the 
idea of its environments — God’s idea,— we can compre¬ 
hend how it becomes a human idea. If it is a thought, 
we can understand how it becomes a human thought. 

This universe is a stupendous reality; and every 
iota, thought, or atom is an independent, conscious factor 
in an infinite sea of thought and consciousness. It is 
God’s synthesis ; finite, human thought rests upon it, is 
environed by it, springs out of it, and is identical 
with it. 

Man by his thought can create only in so far as his 
existence environs other existences. He may attempt to 
create things in the abstract, he may imagine Milton’s 
wars in heaven, or Shakespeare’s tragedies ; he may in 


THE SUN, WITH HIS RAINBOWS AND MIRAGE PICTURES IN THE HEAVENS.” [481] 








































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































' 
















. 






MAN IS A RAY OF GOD’S THOUGHT. 


483 


imagination locate rivers, project mountains, and build 
castles in the air ; he may by his finite, fleeting thought 
reflect transient mirages from God’s infinite, eternal 
thought; but resting on a greater reality, his dreams are 
but reflections and shadowy phantoms from that Reality 
which sustains and supports him. Man is a created,— 


the antitype of his environments,— and not a creator ; and 
his finite, human senses chain him to his proper sphere. 
In the eye, the ear, the touch, the taste, God speaks. 
His thought becomes our thought, we rest on his bosom, 
environed by his consciousness, held fast in his embrace ; 
through the eye, the ear, the touch, the taste, we drink 
knowledge from an infinite source, and feel the truth of 
his thought, which alone is real. 

Man, isolated from all real phenomena, removed from 
God’s thought by the paralysis of the senses, when the 
eye no longer sees nor the ear hears, nor touch feels; 
when all the avenues of God’s thought are shut, and man 
lives alone in the greatness of an isolated existence, apart 
from God ; when all the senses are dead and the mind lost 
in unconscious sleep ; here weak finite man creates and 
builds universes, sure and fixed as God’s creation, and his 
fleeting dreams are true, his fantastic dream-creation a 
twilight miniature of God’s creation. But when the hu¬ 
man senses are awakened, and the avenues of God’s 
thought opened ; when the eye sees, the ear hears, the 
touch feels ; when God pictures his thought in every hu¬ 
man environment, man’s fantastic dream-creation is super- 
ceded by the more fantastic reality of God’s creation. 
Man being finite and ephemeral, his dream-creations are 
finite and ephemeral. God being infinite, immutable, 
and eternal, his thoughts are immutable, infinite, and 
unchangeable. 

2o 


484 


THE FOOL HATH SAID, THERE IS NO GOD. 


Man's very existence is but a transient, ephemeral 
ray from the sunlight of God’s thought, a transient gleam, 
a mingling of pain and pleasure, a growth, perihelion, and 
decay ; a beam of light sweeping across the disk of God’s 
consciousness from the cradle to the grave. 

“ He cometh forth like a flower that is cut down ; 

He fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.” 

Still he is a part of the universe, a part of the chang¬ 
ing yet eternal thought which, governed by fixed and im¬ 
mutable attributes, reflects and fills immensity and eternity. 

“Abeam ethereal, sullied, and absorbed ; 

Though sullied and dishonored, still divine ! 

Dim miniature of greatness, absolute ! 

An heir of glory, a frail child of dust; 

Helpless, immortal, insect, infinite ! 

A worm, a God ! I tremble at myself, 

And in myself am lost. O, how reason reels ! 

What a miracle to man is man !” 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 


GATES AJAR —CONTINUATION OF THE PRECEDING CHAPTER —THE 

LIFE BEYOND THE GRAVE. 

“Ip a man die, shall he live again ? ” 

Were we for the first time to consider the scene of 
death, how confused would be our ideas in regard to the 
great mystery before us. “ What is it?” we would ask, 
and how anxiously would we watch for some signs of wak¬ 
ing, not giving up hope, until decay began its ravages on 
the form before us. 

And then, as we should consign to the earth the one 
so recently among us, a moving, breathing, speaking man, 
now a mass of decayed matter, we should feel that we 
buried there, not the body only, but the whole man. 

Physical nature utters no voice to tell us otherwise ; 
she emits no light to illuminate the grave ; darkness and 
silence rest there, till the light of revelation shines upon 
it, and God proclaims man’s immortality. 

Reason cannot explore the mysterious depths; phil¬ 
osophy contemplates a dark, impenetrable mystery ; and 
science shrinks from the great unknown beyond the veil. 

Yet up from the depths of our own souls wells the 
heaven-born hope of immortality; the divine in our nat¬ 
ures, — thoughts and feelings, — numberless, nameless, 
unutterable, unfathomable emotions within us proclaim — 

It is not all of life to live, nor all of death to die/’ 

[485] 


4 i 


486 IF A MAN DIE, SHALL HE LIVE AGAIN ? 

that in some mysterious way we shall live beyond the 
tomb. These physical senses cannot comprehend other 
universes, other phases of God’s thought, future worlds, 
no less real than this, better and brighter beyond the veil. 

Wherever friendship gazes upon the dead form of 
friendship, wherever affection is separated from affection 
by the hand of death, wherever love kisses the pallid lips 
of love, there are gates ajar; and mortality sees the 
shadow and feels the impress of the immortal. 

There are gates ajar in memory’s tears, in flowers on 
graves, in epitaphs on tombs. 

The deep discernment of the soul’s embryotic, inner 
senses, — eyes which see, and ears which hear, and a 
faith which no argument can overthrow — all proclaim 
that back of the shroud, and the pall, and the bier, back 
of the mold and the decay, there are worlds and joys and 
existences, lives, loves, and realities. 

Immortality is written on every tablet of the human 
heart ; it is proclaimed in every deep emotion of our nat¬ 
ures ; it is written in the unfathomables of the stars ; it is 
whispered in the winds rustling back voices of the de¬ 
parted ; it is echoed in the deep and silent sea ; it is felt 
in solitude and in darkness ; it is spoken aloud in dreams ; 
— while memory lasts, while affection clings, while love 
responds, while the human heart endures, there will ever 
remain the heaven-born hope of immortality. 

“Lo, the poor Indian ! whose untutored mind 
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind ; 

His soul, proud science ne ’er taught to stray 
Far as the solar walk, or Milky Way ; 

Yet simple nature to his hope has given, 

Behind the cloud-capped hill, an humbler heaven, 


Immortality is Proclaimed by Every Deep Emotion op Our Natures ; It is Spoken Aloud in Dreams.” [187] 









































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































GATES AJAR. 


489 


Some safer world, in depth of woods’ embrace, 

Some happier island in the watery waste, 

Where slaves once more their native land behold, 

No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold : 

To be content his natural desire. 

He asks no angel’s wing, no seraph’s fire ; 

But thinks, admitted to that equal sky. 

His faithful dog shall bear him company.” 

What mean the sayings which they tell us who have 
been restored from the near approach of death, brought 
back from drowning, and severe illness ! — which they tell 
us who from fright or impending danger become physically 
blind, deaf, and dumb, conscious of nothing, save the de¬ 
tailed history of their lives, memory repeating the past, 
and giving back all its details and thoughts, so that in a 
moment they have seemed to be wrapped around with the 
repetitions of their lives, with all of its shadings of good 
or bad, the good wrapping them round with a halo of 
glory, and the bad filling conscience with remorses, reiter¬ 
ated and repeated with new freshness and vividness ? 

There are other senses in the soul of man lying dor¬ 
mant. These eyes and these ears are the mediums of our 
mortal and present state, the chrysalis shell of the soul’s 
humanity, by means of which God has created around us 
this present relative world. There are other eyes and 
other ears and other senses lying dormant in the soul of 
man — embryos — dim rudiments — the shadows of what 
shall be,— a budding faith in the form of hope, waiting 
for metamorphosis and development — waiting for that 
fuller beginning beyond the tomb. 

We have shown in the preceding chapter that this 
universe exists alone in our thoughts, through our senses, 
as a phase of the Infinite Mind, in whom we exist. 


4-90 IF A MAN DIE, SHALL HE LIVE AGAIN ? 

Barriers to a knowledge of other and future states 
are these finite senses; these constitute our humanity, 
and limit the possibility of the development of the soul’s 
inner senses. 

The grave, therefore, is the gate, through sleep and 
the dark river, to a new birth, a new world, a new uni¬ 
verse, and a new sphere of action. E’en the champions 
of infidelity cannot stifle that which their deep nature 
proclaims, and Ingersoll, overpowered with grief at his 
brother’s grave, cries,— 

“ In the night of death, hope sees a star, and 
Lingering love almost hears the rustle of a -wing.” 

Beneath this human nature, and the relative sur¬ 
roundings created by and through our senses, there is 
that in man, deep hidden in the recesses of his undevel¬ 
oped nature, which is eternal, and which will be the 
germs of his future unfolding. We have shown in the 
preceding chapter that this universe is a phase only of the 
infinite thought; there are other universes, other meta- 
morphic senses to be awakened in the soul of man, other 
and future phases of God’s thought, in the mansions of 
whose life we shall live. 

In the panorama of this life and this universe, all 
things are relative. The physical phases of this universe, 
from the standpoint of human sense, are as mortal and 
shadowy as the shadowy mortality of man — they fall 
together — in the obliteration of mortal sense, all nature 
dies. The whole physical universe dies in the death of 
the senses which take cognizance of it, which perceive 
and create it. The sun and the stars, the landscape 
with its flowers, become alike stranded in the fading eye 


THE DARK RIVER AND A NEW UNIVERSE. 491 

and dying sense. Time and space, forms and colors, 
weights and measurements, have an existence alone in 
these mortal senses, as a phase of God’s thought, produc¬ 
ing this mortal universe, and this mortal embryotic state 
of man. Beyond the tomb in the resurrection and meta¬ 
morphosis of every latent force, when the world and time 
shall be no more, having finished their course ; in the 
seething, searching flame of judgment, we shall per¬ 
chance awake from this dream of earth to find it, with all 
the scenes of this present universe, and the stars of this 
upper sky, lost in a point on the shore of an infinite 
sea of life. 

Says Carlyle: “To the eye of vulgar logic, what is 
man? — an omniverous biped that wears breeches. To 
the eye of pure reason, what is he ? — a soul, a spirit, and 
divine apparition ; around his mysterious Me,— under all 
these wool-rags, a garment of flesh or of sinews, context- 
ured in the loom of heaven. Deep hidden is he, under 
that strange garment, amid sounds and colors and forms ; 
as it were swathed in, and inextricably overswathed, yet 
it is sky-woven and worthy of a God. 

6 c Know of a truth that only the time-shadings have 
perished, or are perishable, that the real Being of what¬ 
ever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be, is even 
now and forever. Are we not spirits that are shaped 
into a body, into an appearance, and that fade away again 
into air and invisibility ? 

“ Oh, heaven ! it is mysterious, it is awful, to con¬ 
sider that we not only carry each a future ghost within 
him, but are now in every deed ghosts ; these limbs — 
whence had we them ? this stormy force, this life-blood 
with its burning passion — they are dust and shadow, 


492 IF A MAN DIE, SHALL HE LIVE AGAIN ? 

a shadowy system gathered around our Me, wherein 
through some moments or years the divine essence is to 
be revealed.” 

The panorama of the world above, beneath, and 
around us, including our own being, is but a finite, mor¬ 
tal phase of God’s thought amid unperceived, infinite 
mansions of his life. This human life is draped with 
surroundings, mysteriously fixed in the senses, seen, 
heard, felt ; drapery behind drapery, in endless perspec¬ 
tive ; with radiant changing colors, forms and sounds, 
lights and shades, wondrously inwrought in the camera 
plates of the human senses. These finite mortal eyes, 
and these finite mortal ears are God’s camera plates of 
human life, from which the human soul projects the out¬ 
ward universe like pictures throwm from a magic lantern. 
Changing the human senses, as mortals to spirits change, 
will change the world and scenes around us ; while new 
senses, unfolding in the soul of man, will create for him 
other worlds, and other universes — other phases of God’s 
thought — future worlds, brighter and happier beyond 
the tomb. 

Man is encompassed, environed, wrapped around 
with symbols. Things visible are but garments clothing 
higher, celestial, invisible. 

Behold the world rocking and plunging among the 
stars, within her bosom smoldering fiery passion, and 
without green meadows, whispering zephyrs, and quiet 
sunshine ; behold the sun in his cloud-couch of crimson 
and cloth of gold, rising from the silver of waters, reflect¬ 
ing from his glance rainbows of blended colors — look 
first upon the imagery — these outward hangings of the 
Infinite, then go beyond the scenic shadings, lights and 
colors, forms and sounds ; put on for a moment a spirit 



FAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY. 


“It 


Hath Not Entered Into 


the Heart Of Man to 


Conceive What 


We 


Shall Be.” 


[493] 





























































































































































OTHER MANSIONS OF GOD’S THOUGHT. 495 

garb as eternal as He who occupies this changing and 
many-pictured throne. 

“ Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate, 

All but the page prescribed their present state ; 

From brutes what men, from men what spirits know, 

Or who could suffer being here below ; 

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day. 

Had he thy reason, would he skip and play ? 

Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, 

And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood ; 

Ah, blindness to the future, kindly given ! 

That each may fill the circle marked by heaven.” 

At death, in the dissolution of the senses which con¬ 
stitute this life, the now existing, embryotic germs of the 
soul’s inner senses shall unfold, through which and in 
which, we shall bask in the sunlight of a new life, explore 
new heights and new depths, and revel in the sunshine of 
a new universe, the nature of which — 

“ Eye bath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath 
It entered into the hearts of man 
To conceive what we shall be ; but we shall 
See Him as he is, and be like Him.” 

Even though we cannot comprehend the exact condi¬ 
tion of the future, let us dispel every wavering doubt aris¬ 
ing from the transitory shadows of earthly things. How 
vain the infinite plan or object of life without this final 
reckoning of the good and bad in every nature, this- final 
righting and shining of every human virtue ! 

“ It must be so — Plato, thou reason’st well — 

Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 

This longing after immortality ? 

Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror 


496 IF A MAN DIE, SHALL HE LIVE AGAIN? 

Of falling into nought ? Why shrinks the soul 
Back on itself, and startles at destruction ? 

Tis the Divinity, that stirs within us ; 

’T is Heaven itself, that points out a hereafter, 

And intimates eternity to man. 

Eternity ! thou pleasing, dreadful thought ! 

Through what variety of untried being, 

Through what new scenes and changes must we pass ! 

The wide, th’ unbounded prospect lies before me ; 

But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it.” 

Poets and philosophers have delighted to compare 
this earthly existence in its relation to the next, to the 
analogies existing between that embryonic existence 
which we once lived, and which is now forgotten, but 
from which dim beginning came this mortal life. 

“This is the bud of being, the dim dawn, 

The vestibule, the twilight of our day ; 

Life’s theater as yet is shut, and death,— 

Strong death, alone, can heave the massive bar, 

This gross impediment of clay remove, 

And make us embryos in existence free ; 

From real life, but little more remote 
Is he, not yet a candidate for light. 

The future embryo slumbering in his sire ; 

Embryos we must be, till we burst the shell — 

Yon ambient, azure shell, and spring to life — 

The life of gods ! Aye, transport, and of men ! ” 

Taking now the Bible, we read the yet more sublime 
language of Paul. “ So also is the resurrection of the dead. 
It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” 
As we have borne the image of the earthly, we must also 
bear the image of the heavenly ; for this corruptible must 
put on incorruption ; this mortal immortality. “Then 
shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death 


OTHER MANSIONS OF GOD’S THOUGHTS. 497 

is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? 
O grave, where is thy victory ? ” 

“When the years of earth are over, and the cares of earth are done ; 
When the reign of time is ended, and eternity begun ; 

When the thunders of Omniscience, on our wakened senses roll, 

And the sky above shall wither, and be gathered like a scroll ; 

When among the lofty mountains, and across the mighty sea, 

The sublime, celestial bugler shall ring out the revelry, 

Then shall march with brightest laurels and with proud victorious 
tread, 

To their stations up in heaven, Christ’s great army of the dead.” 


CHAPTER XL. 


MEDITATIONS IN THE NIGHT—BIRTH, GROWTH, AND DEATH OF 
WORLDS — HEAVENS AND HELLS —GOD’S THOUGHT AND THE 
GLEAM OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS — A CONTINUATION OF 
THE TWO PRECEDING CHAPTERS. 

“In my Father’s house are many mansions.” 

We have found axial and orbital motion of the earth 
and all planets, to be due to the rotary motion of their 
atmospheres, under the influence of the sun. There will 
come a time when the earth’s atmosphere shall have been 
exhausted — its oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon, through 
vegetable growth, stored away into the solid crust of 
the globe. 

Vegetation feeds on the elements of air. If a pound 
of dry earth be placed in a vase, and germ trees planted 
therein, and supplied with water, they will grow and 
come to weigh many pounds ; while the weight of in¬ 
closed earth will not be sensibly diminished. Thus it is 
the earth’s atmosphere is slowly but surely being de¬ 
voured by the waving forests and green verdure of all the 
landscape ; the elements alike of water and air — oxygen, 
hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon — are crumbling by this 
invisible process of combustion into the ashes of the 
earth. And in the ages of the future, the earth will have 
become a bleak, barren waste, as desolate as the moon, 
without oceans or atmosphere, the picture of forgetful¬ 
ness and solitude, awaiting her final dissolution and res¬ 
urrection in the sun. 

[ 498 ] 



MEDITATIONS IN TIIE NIGHT. 


[499] 

















ALL THINGS GROW OLD AND DIE. 


501 


All things grow old and die. The same inexorable 
destiny that awaits each and all of us awaits the great 
mother of our life, the world herself, and all worlds; 
they will become as dead as the tribes slumbering in their 
bosoms. 

When the earth becomes airless, waterless, motion¬ 
less, lifeless ; when the white bosom of her oceans shall 
heave no more with love, and her palpitating winds lie 
down in death ; all that live shall have shared her des¬ 
tiny ; the countless races of moving things which inhabit 
her hills, her plains, her air, her seas, shall have made 
their bed with her, all in one mighty sepulcher. 

“Yet not to thine eternal resting place 
Shalt thou retire alone ; nor could’st thou wish 
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 
With patriarchs of the infant world, with kings ; 

The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good ; 

Fair forms and hoary seers of ages past, 

All in one mighty sepulcher.” 

When the earth’s atmosphere shall have been ex¬ 
hausted, she will no longer revolve on her axis, and 
oscillate around the sun with an impetus and life of her 
own ; but carried still by the force of momentum around 
the sun in his ether currents, she may for a period, like 
the satellite which revolves around our earth, roll a 
silent spectator, reflecting his light, until she falls into 
his fires. 

’T is night. I sit in my window, looking up into the 
bright canopy of the sky. The constellation of Canes 
Venatici is moving toward the horizon. u The path of 
the ghosts,” — the Milky Way, like a rainbow of fire-flies, 
sparkles athwart the sky. I gaze steadily into the faces 
of these million suns. Answer me, ye worlds; are 


502 


MEDITATIONS IN THE NIGHT. 


you fathers of families that still cluster around you, the 
architype and source of that life which perchance clings 
upon their bosoms ? do you think and feel ? but the stars 
twinkle on as before. 

I compare these moving constellations of stars to the 
destiny which fates human thought and human action. I 
behold Napoleon with his marshaled armies under the 
Pyramids, moving like constellations of stars. I behold 
the genii of the world, like beacon lights, radiating in the 
ages. I behold an ignorant sea of human passion mak¬ 
ing them martyrs. I look again, and see dens where 
purity is crushed, and where crime bends low and growls. 
Across the way, in yonder house, is a father in sickness, 
surrounded by a family of little children ; a few angel 
women are there, administering to want and distress, like 
the women who followed in the night and watched in 
darkness at the door of the sepulcher. The great head of 
the good old family physician looks placid as the rock of 
adamant, while deep within surges a mighty sea ; he is 
fighting back death with the keen scalpel of science. I 
behold men acting out their inherent natures, rolling in 
their orbits, like the stars of this mighty sky, driven on¬ 
ward by destiny. Back from the depths of my medita¬ 
tions comes the echo — voices rolling back from the stars 
— “ crawling worm — globule of our life’s blood — mold 
on our bosoms — finite thing, we are infinite.” Meditat¬ 
ing on this infinitely varied sea, I am forced to believe 
with Pope, that — 

“All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 

Whose body nature is, and God the soul." 

Only that part of the universe is visible to human 
senses which environs and creates human senses. With 
new developments in the soul of man, when the chrysalis- 


THE UNIVERSE AS GOD VIEWS IT. 


503 


shell of this mortal coil shall be shuffled off, and man 
beholds with other eyes and hears with other ears and 
contemplates with other senses, the whole imagery of out¬ 
ward things will have been changed. 

This mortal existence is on the lining, and not on the 
true surface of God's creation. All things are to man 
but illusions, deceptions, phantoms ; transformed and mys¬ 
tified through these opaque crystalline retinas and these 
ear-drums, changing the true aspect of sounds, colors, 
forms, and objects, modifying and transforming the uni- 
vers around us. 

When we step out from the lining into the reality, 
and behold things as they are, the universe will present a 
new and totally dissimilar aspect. The opening doors,— 
dark waters intervening, the tomb and the shroud,— will 
disclose new phases and realities of the infinite creation 
of God’s thought. 

“ In my Father’s house are many mansions.'’ 

Could we behold the universe as it is, in all its varied 
aspects, as God sees it, perhaps objects of our admiration, 
which we had almost worshiped, in the form of men, 
great and good, would appear in their abstract attributes ; 
and instead of these decaying symbols of dust, love might 
take the form and associations of love ; and every grace 
and charity, every song and beauty, appear in its true 
light and true form, and every evil shrink back, with 
muttered imprecations and like associations, clothed in 
forms as monstrous as its villainy. 

Could we view the universe as God sees it, from its 
right instead of its wrong side, as it is, instead of by the 
hallucinations of physical senses, and their false mirages 
of colors, sounds, and forms, hiding from us the true as¬ 
pect and glory of things, thereby creating this false exist- 


504 


MEDITATIONS IN THE NIGHT. 


ence and probationary life — could we view the universe 
as God sees it, we might behold, in this Milky Way of 
stars, stupendous aggregations of evil, and like aggrega¬ 
tions of virtue with their million-clustered joys. 

“The things which are seen are temporal, but the things 
Which are not seen are eternal. Now we see through 
A glass darkly. There are celestial bodies, and 
Bodies terrestrial. And we know that if our 
Earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, 

We have a building of God, an house not made 
With hands, eternal in the heavens.” 

John Wesley, I have been reading your sermons ; 
and Swedenborg, my meditations combine your thoughts. 
This universe, visible or invisible, is the surging sea of 
heaven and hell. Thought is immortal ; it clusters to¬ 
gether by the law of affinity, likes and dislikes, assuming 
form and clothed in a garb corresponding with character. 
This universe is a universe of thought, sensation, passion, 
and feeling, the surging sea of heaven and hell. The sun, 
reflecting a halo of glory, is the embrace of life and love 
we cannot comprehend ; while devils fill the realms of 
u Hades” with forms monstrous as their villainy. This 
human sea of white and red globules, of virtue and sin, 
must break the shell of this fleshly coil and the false 
mirage of these physical senses, and take form, with 
place and associations, corresponding with their thoughts. 

Even as the white and red globules of blood in our 
veins are each a perfect world of life ; even as these 
globules perish in the brain and die in a steady stream, 
whose life leaps out in the thoughts we are thinking and 
the emotions we are feeling, so this stream of human 
globules, circulating in the veins of higher celestial, 
are falling in perpetual death ; supplying the great brain 


THE UNIVERSE AS GOD VIEWS IT. 


505 


of fire and ether with forms high and low ; bliss un¬ 
speakable, or with pain. This human flood of a perpet¬ 
ual dying leaps out into the objective, and man assumes 
the form and associations of his thoughts and feelings. 
To the pure in heart, death is the leaping out into a 
life grand and full of glory ; while men of base pas¬ 
sions will find themselves in their thoughts embodied; 
the w T arrior in the smoke and strife of war ; and the miser, 
with his wealth, embodied in his thoughts and fears, will 
use all the cunning of trade, and in his poverty beg for a 
drop of water ; and all that is bad in human passion, born 
of the fiery elements of this flesh, shall leap out into 
weeping. 

Thought, feelings, and propensities are immortal — 
sleep does not destroy, and death cannot annihilate — e’en 
though in the grave man remains unconscious — dead to 
the possibility of his resurrection — until the fiery elements 
of the sun shall touch the slumbering forces, and every la¬ 
tent energy spring to life before the bar of judgment. The 
sleep of death, whether it be a second of time, or the long 
lapse of slow rolling ages, will be to immortality and to 
God the same ; — beyond the grave — all the same — in 
that fuller life, where time and distance shall be no more. 

Evil thoughts and feelings may take form in the 
metaphorical language of Milton : 

“Of frozen desolation and hissing fiery seas, 

Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death ; 
Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds, 

Perverse, all monsters, all prodigious things ; 

Abominable, unutterable ; and worse than fables 
Yet hath feigned, or fear conceived ; gorgons, hydras, 

And chimeras dire. The beams of the sun it hates ; 

And hatred takes form, and shape ; and with associate 
Legions, fill vast regions of space, like fiery balls.” 

26 


% 


506 


MEDITATIONS IN THE NIGHT. 


This universe is a universe of thought. Man is but 
a ray of consciousness hid within a symbol on the disk of 
eternal being, a struggle of principles good and bad. 
This universe is the surging sea of heaven and hell. 

This map of humanity is a map of forms and sym¬ 
bols ; these human beings are the shadows where play 
the eternal passions, where God’s fleeting, feeling emo¬ 
tions take form, where the good is happiness and the evil 
pain, where principles are struggling for associate princi¬ 
ples, where affinities and repulsions, vice and virtue, love 
and hate, are sifting out heaven and hell. 

This Milky Way of stars is the path of mighty do¬ 
mains where thought takes form, where virtue clusters in 
the embrace of virtue with a glory outshining the sun ; 
and this Milky Way is the path of infinite gradations, of 
migrations and transmigrations, where the bad is eter¬ 
nally gravitating towards deeper hells and assuming more 
monstrous forms, where virtue is climbing upward to 
brighter suns and a happiness more exquisite. 

From the union or disunion of elements which com¬ 
pose worlds, to their complexities in living beings, and 
dissolution at death ; when the grain is gathered into the 
garner and separated from the chaff, in which the conflict 
of the good and bad in our natures divides, and new asso¬ 
ciations take place higher and lower, this Milky Way of 
stars with their eternal evolutions of birth and death, 
mingling and separating, is the path of man’s immor¬ 
tality, and the infinite road of new being, extending from 
the depths of sin and pain, to the heights of virtue and 
glory. 


“ The bell strikes one ; we take no note of time, 
But from its loss ; to give it then a tongue 
Is wise in man ; as if an angel spoke, 



u, Tis Night 


T Sit in My Window Looking Oi t Into the 
Canopy of the Sky.” 


Bright 

[507] 






































































MORTAL AND IMMORTAL UNIVERSES. 


509 


I hear the solemn sound. If heard aright, 

It is the knell of my departed hours ; 

Where are they, with the years beyond the flood ? 

My hopes and fears start up alarmed, 

And o’er life’s narrow verge, look down — on what ? 

A fathomless abyss, a dread eternity, 

How surely mine ; and can eternity belong to me, 

Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour ? ” 

Before me, in the stellar depths, in this boundless 
sea of symbols, I read, as it were, inscriptions on the 
arched ethereal dome, as if on massive doors to infinite, 
eternal realms of thought and being ; the river of death 
between, — the tomb and decay — massive doors in this 
vault of symbols, shutting mortals out of heaven or hell. 

And here in the night, with solitude behind me, and 
this immeasurable Milky Way of stars above and around 
me, I am not alone : methinks I catch the inspiration of 
voices, deep intonations of the stars, speaking each eter¬ 
nal principles; and in their scintillating colors behold 
clustered attributes and shadings of the Infinite, grada¬ 
tions and symbols of eternity, from heaven to hell. 

I worship here, in this temple of God, in this im¬ 
measurable universe of stars. 

I worship here ; not as that French high priest of 
philosophy, August Comte, would have me, the decaying, 
crumbling, mortal forms of man, however much genius 
has made it itself admired. I worship attributes, in the 
abstract; justice, mercy, goodness, love. I worship the 
song, the music, and not lips of clay reflecting it. I wor¬ 
ship heroism and precept, and not the man receiving and 
acting it. I worship truth and light in its glory, and not 
the skull of clay it has lit and illumed. I worship virtue 
and purity, and not the human glass reflecting a few rays 
of the scintillating brightness. ' 


510 


MEDITATIONS IN THE NIGHT. 


I worship God, and the abstract principles of eternal 
being, to the eye visible in this infinite universe of sym¬ 
bols,— oceans, mountains, rivers, flowers, the genii of 
the world’s history,— and here in the night, above and 
around me symbolized in lights and figures — stars. 

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods. 

There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 

There is society where none intrudes. 

By the deep sea, and music in its roar ; 

I love not man the less, but nature more, 

From these our interviews, in which I steal 
From all I may be, or have been before, 

To mingle with the universe, and feel 

What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal. ” 

Behold a comet in the northern sky ! You have be¬ 
fore you a mighty destiny, a future of world-history of 
life and love ! You will form a crust between central 
expanding heat and a circumference of condensing cold. 
You will repeat the history of the earth’s forming shell, 
wrapping a sea of fire with ribs of rock, with an exterior 
of vapor and ethereal gases, upon which a sun’s rays can 
act, establishing axial and orbital motion. You will then 
move with a life of your own, settle down as a staid and 
formal world, rotating with slow dignity around some 
sun, the choice of your affinities and attractions, by 
whose genial warmth you will continue to develop, and 
roll on your grand destiny through cycles of ages, lifting 
high cloud-capped mountains, with intervening oceans, 
hills, and valleys, clothed with verdure and animate with 
life, with thought, and love. 

You, too, shall become venerable with age. Your 
crystal streams and billowy oceans will in time disappear, 
and your winds lie down in death ; as you, perchance, 


BIRTH AND DEATH OF WORLDS. 


511 


still move in the ether currents, carried on the shoulder 
of a comrade — the lifeless moon of another planet, 
until you fall together into the vortex of fire and ruin. 

Comets are carried in the ether currents, radiating 
outward from the rotary motion of great suns. Stupen¬ 
dous ethereal wheels revolve around all suns, impinging 
on each other ; while comets are carried in the wakes be¬ 
tween. And it is not strange that you sometimes wander 
from the zone of your parent sun — carried in the gulf- 
streams between suns and systems, through varied paths 
of the complex universe. 

Your chaotic elements will surge, amid fire and 
water, world-life and progress, virtue and sin, pleasure 
and pain, for cycles of ages, evolving the glory of im¬ 
mortal purity ; while the dross of your elements will be¬ 
come accumulated for deeper hells. 

Comets and worlds, like the tiny insects that flutter 
in their brief but happy existence ; like every blade of 
grass that shoots up to-day and is cut down to-morrow; 
like every thought that springs from the brain of man 
and takes on activity ; like every emotion of virtue which 
brings happiness, or every dark passion attended with 
pain,— all repeat the same story — the story of all the 
stars — a story of birth, changes, and death — a mingling 
and a separating. 

Comets do not originate in, or belong to, our solar 
system : they are wanderers from remote regions ; and 
the nebulae, seen by the telescope in Orion, have drifted 
in from regions remote from the Milky Way. 

But there was a time far back in the ages when, suc¬ 
cessively, the earth and all her sister planets were comets. 
And the sun itself has been built up of an infinite number 
of lesser worlds that have evolved from nebula, through 


512 


MEDITATIONS IN THE NIGHT. 


comets, to planets, lived out their age, and fallen into 
his fires. 

Organization is still forcing itself into remote regions, 
and evolving the unconscious attributes of space. 

Let us, in imagination, penetrate the boundaries of 
the universe, and explore the regions between the twilight 
and the shadow, where omniscient God in solitude reigns 
and broods. Yonder, stupendous, shadowy outlines of 
ethereal nebula ! Nearer, the dim markings of future 
Milky Ways, with here and there fiery centers of future 
suns! Nearer, comets are wheeling in their ellipses, 
forming planets, which live out their age, and fall into a 
central vortex of fire. 

Look yonder, in the other direction, at the antipodes 
of creative immensity ; see old age, decay, and death of 
worlds ; see stars falling like snowflakes in furious storm, 
and sounding the blast of ruin in the cyclone of elements, 
with fire and tempest. 

Making to coil and flash, in terrible attempted war, 

The devils of resounding hell, and Satan, sin, and death 
Confound ; amazement confronts, and helpless recoil 
At the magnitude of God’s omniscience ; while he 
Spreads out the heavens like a molten looking-glass. 

This universe is not the product of two conflicting 
powers, the one good and the other bad — the battle 
ground and dual creation of gods and devils with equal 
power struggling for the mastery, and each attempting to 
excel the other in the prodigious variety and extent of their 
creations ; we have borrowed such ideas from the Druids, 
whose religion can be traced back through Rome and an¬ 
cient Greece into Turkey and China. 

This universe is not the struggle between a god in 
equal power, contending with a devil, but the product of 


HEAVENS AND HELLS. 


513 


infinite goodness and love, —the creation of one omnipo¬ 
tent, omniscient, and omnipresent Divinity. In the lan¬ 
guage of Isaiah,— 

“I liave stretched out the heavens, and all the 
Hosts of them. I have made the earth, and created 
Man upon it. I form the light, and create 
Darkness. I make peace, and create evil. 

I am God, and there is none beside me.” 

This universe is God — his thought — clothed with 
form and animate with activity; and the existence of 
every principle depends upon its opposite or counterpart. 
Without a creation, there could be no void. Without the 
heights, there could be no depths ; without the vast, no 
small; without the infinite, no finite. Without darkness, 
there could be no light. Without pain, there could be no 
pleasure. Without malice, there could be no charity. 
Without hatred, there could be no love. Without vil¬ 
lainy, there could be no justice. Without sin, there 
could be no virtue ; without devils, no seraphs; without 
the shadows of a hell, no glory of the heaven. 

If we had never been weak, could we appreciate 
strength ? If we had never suffered, could we compre¬ 
hend happiness ? If we had never been in the darkness 
of error, could we realize the truth ? If we had never 
been the victims of sin, could we be righteous ? If we 
had never felt the pangs of sorrow, could we pity ? If 
we had never felt the need of forgiveness, could we 
forgive ? 

Every virtue is its own reward, 

And every sin its own punishment. 

Infinite love has fixed the school of life, with all its 
weakness, its error, its passion, its painful lessons, its 


514 


MEDITATIONS IN THE NIGHT. 


conflicting emotions, its dark clouds of sin, its inhu¬ 
manity, vice, and crime. 

Infinite love has placed humanity in the surging sea, 
amid the shadows, in the billows, amid the darkness. 

Infinite love has fixed the pangs of pain, the shriek 
and cry of agony, and the dying groan ;—and this is the 
greatest of all virtues, “charity,” e’en towards the vilest 
and darkest of God’s creatures ; — in the surging, seeth¬ 
ing, painful sea of human passion, human error, human 
weakness, with all its vice and crime, under the rod of 
chastenings, the stripes of sorrow, and the pangs of re¬ 
morse— from the groan, the shriek, the agony, infinite 
love, through “ two eternities,” is working out an eternal 
weight of virtue and of glory. There is nothing created 
in vain ; the self-chosen path of righteousness and happi¬ 
ness is the end and ultimatum of things. But the heights 
and the depths, the lights and shadows, will remain for¬ 
ever. 

It was the father of Unitarianism, Dr. Channing, 
who said, “ If there is a devil, God made him, and that 
out of the devilish part of himself ; ” in other words, the 
devil, feigned and feared, together with the fires of his 
hell, are but the rods of God’s chastenings and the clouds 
concealing, for our good, the heights of infinite and eter¬ 
nal love. 

And as luster, darkness adds to light; 

As seems the better best, when with the worst compared ; 

So virtue more divine appears with gusts of hell 
Careering by its side ; and thought will gaze, 

And tearful moan, that purest innocence 
Could reach such horrid depths by dalliance 
With the leprosy of sin ; while every spark 
Of virtue born in hell, with quick affinity 
Upward darts. Like Raphael’s enchanting beauty. 


HEAVENS AND HELLS. 


515 


Chained in oil, made glorious by contrast 
Of slimy serpents on which she treads ; 

So God in glory becomes more radiant 

With devils under his feet; the heights of virtue 

More blessed, hovering o’er the seas of sin. 

This universe is God — his thought — clothed in form 
and animated with activity. Man stands midway from 
nothing to the Deity, midway between the depths and the 
heights. He feels a sting of pain and a gleam of pleas¬ 
ure. He hears the groan of hell and the song of heaven. 
He catches a gleam of life, and sinks in a pang of death, 
but not the death of annihilation ; this death he cannot 
die. Elements dissolve ; virtue mounts upward, and sin 
goes downward ; “ the grain is separated from the chaff ; ” 
immortality flashes forth in long-drawn, quick succeeding 
grandeur, new rays in the sunlight of God’s thought — a 
consciousness and a forgetfulness — a fire-fly hashing in 
the night of God’s eternity. 

In the language of Carlyle, u Generation after gener' 
ation takes to itself the form of a body ; and forth-issu¬ 
ing from Cimmerian Night on heaven's mission appears. 
What force and fire is in each he expends, one grinding in 
the mill of industry ; one, hunter-like, climbing the giddy 
Alpine heights of science ; one madly dashed in pieces on 
the rocks of strife, in war with his fellow : — and then the 
heaven-sent is recalled ; his earthly vesture falls away, 
and soon even to sense becomes a vanished shadow. 
Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of 
heaven’s artillery, does this mysterious mankind thunder 
and flame in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, 
through the unknown deep. Thus, like a God-created, 
fire-breathing spirit-host, we emerge from the inane ; haste 
stormfully across the astonished earth, then plunge again 


5.16 


MEDITATIONS IN THE NIGHT. 


into the inane. . . . But whence?—O Heaven, whither? 
Sense knows not; faith knows not; only that it is through 
mystery to mystery, from God to God.” 

Man is not the small being he seems. He is as 
broad as the sweep of his thoughts, as high and as low. 
He is that portion of God’s universe, of God’s manifest 
thought, which he receives and comprehends — a broad, 
wide being, chained to mortality by a point of human 
nature. The surrounding hills and stars — the objective 
thought of God — find a transient, ephemeral echo in his 
transient, ephemeral life; but his thoughts live in the 
bosom of the universe when this mortal coil shall have 
vanished into empty air and invisibility. The human 
mind is an emanation from God — a point of independent 
consciousness, and with him eternal, existing even now in 
him, undisturbed by life or death. The abstract princi¬ 
ples and emotions of love, justice, mercy, philanthropy, 
heroism, and charity will thrill through all eternity. 

An illustration of immortality is observed in the 
study of light, which travels one hundred and eighty-six 
thousand miles a second ; should therefore some celestial 
spirit, moving with the rapidity of thought, desire to take 
a photographic picture, and witness the battle of Water¬ 
loo, he could even now accomplish it, by going to some 
remote star, where the image of the battle is just flashing 
the news in approaching light. Thus in light itself ; no 
mirage, history, or detail is lost. All the pictures of the 
panorama of things, in their minutest details, since the 
world began, are stored away in the immortal eternity of 
God. Suns, with human inhabited worlds, have faded 
from the heavens, gone out, before our sun and our world 
was born, whose rapidly traveling light, with the immor¬ 
tal mirage and history of their every detail, have not yet 


HEAVENS AND HELLS. 


517 


reached us ; these stupendous mirage-volumes of all the 
past, belong to God and to eternity. 

Viewing the infinite sea of principles, symbolizing 
immortality, who can believe in the annihilation of even 
these simple, finite feelings — human thoughts ? They 
are a part of the universe with God eternal. 

If a drop of water and a ray of sunlight will create a 
rainbow in the sky ; if the force of a pebble dropped into 
the sea goes radiating into infinite circles; if a song 
breathed into the air wakes the echoes of all the land¬ 
scape, carried by the telephones of space, or locked in the 
phonographs of nature, for future and infinite reproduc¬ 
tion, how impossible death ! how defeated the grave ! 

Even as the physical nerves of sensation, life, and 
thought all center at a small point in the medulla oblon¬ 
gata of this brain (where materialists have located the 
microscopic soul of man) ; but the circumference of this 
point is not the circumference of man ; nor is the meas¬ 
ure of this human corruption, with these organs and 
limbs, the measure of man. Man is a broad, wide being, 
a deep, high being ; as high and as low, as broad and as 
full, as the sweep of his thoughts ; as pure and as vile as 
the gleams of love and hate which fill his soul and into 
which he radiates. 

In a former chapter we have shown that 4 4 matter is 
thoughtthat 44 thought and the thing thought of [using 
the language of Hegle] are identical; ” that this physical 
universe is an emanation from mind — it is God’s thought, 
existing as the abstract elements of his attributes, and as 
reflected emanations in the minds of his concrete, transient 
spirits. 

This human flesh (a mortal coil chaining mind to 
matter, heaven to hell), cannot now raise itself beyond 


518 


MEDITATIONS IN THE NIGHT. 


the leaden strata between the deeps of rock and fire and 
the heights of air and sky. 

Who knows but what these eternal fires upon which 
we tread are hissing caldrons of thought and passion ? 
Who knows but what these eternal strata of upper ether 
(to whose existence our air is fire and poison), are the 
abode of consciousness and love, of which human nature 
sometimes catches a gleam in visions and in dreams, 
whereby heaven sometimes dips down into hell, as it did 
eighteen hundred years ago, 

In the person of that Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Glory, 

And talked to insect man, in words deep with meaning ? 

Who knows but what these endless gradations of ele¬ 
ments, strata resting upon strata from molten rock to 
ethereal sky, are the garbs of eternal thought and being 
where chained to their spheres? God’s feeling, sentient 
beings reign and live ; from devils to man, from man to 
angels, from angels to glory. 

What human mind can take in and comprehend this 
Milky Way of stars — this infinite chain of thought and 
being,— with their eternal evolutions of birth and death 
mingling and separating, sifting out heaven and hell; 
this ladder which Jacob saw reaching from earth to sky, 
from deepest hell to highest heaven, upon which myriad 
beings came and went ? 

What though the earth grow old and die! what 
though worlds and systems of worlds crumble together 
into a seething mass of affinities and repulsions, of loves 
and hates ! Thought and passion, volition and feeling, the 
abstract attributes and conscious principles of the universe, 
are eternal. Sleep cannot destroy, and death cannot an- 



“Human Nature Sometimes Catches a Gleam in Visions and in Dreams.” 

[ 519 ] 












































































* 

















• . ' ■ ■ 





























HEAVENS AND HELLS. 


521 


nihilate. Worlds and systems of worlds will come again ; 
and on their bosoms will be gathered together a higher 
life, a deeper love, a wider vision, and a grander glory. 


Man is a sleeping somnambulist on the couch 

Of God’s throne, dreaming the wondrous dream of life,— 

A sleep-walker on the earth,— a ticket-of-leave 
From God’s eternity ! In the happy bliss of 
The ancient heaven, amid the music of spheres. 

He fell into the sleep of the earthly dreams. 

And forgets the past. Slumbering for a moment, 

Since the sun began, till the world is finished, 

He dreams the story of human history, 

In which with fevered brain, and hot, breathless passion, 

He is an actor in the play of vice and virtue. 

And the surging, changing drama of life and death. 

In death and dissolving worlds, when the trump shall sound, 
He will awake from transient, momentary sleep, 

Calling him back from dreams to vaster spheres, 

As self-existent in God he lives eternal; — 

A fire of metamorphic, scintillating colors, 

Indestructible, uncreated by heaven or hell — 

Whether reposing in the cradle of nature. 

Mixing with the mighty universe^of suns, 

Or, anon, the feeling king of a human skull; — 

Bursting the shell of clay, delivered from the womb 
Of nature, from the mortal, finite universe, 

He will awake from dreams to other spheres, 

From the probationary test and school of life, 

By evil assimilation to a paradise lost, 

Or exalted in virtue to a paradise regained ' 














n 0 ' 
tV 4 Vi 



v * 


,<V S 
r & A 

° ° . 

\ <f> v X ' cc c A 

9 * * % V ■ V ./ ** V 
' <■' % '«.** A „ He < * 

°o cP'.^V'V 



<L^ -* o « \ 

♦ ©-. r 0 ? C 0 

■i O 0 ■> 

* ^ V 

^ O 0 x 

h»’ ^,.„/v^*'/ 5 s'” : ?V* ,T °’’A'• ./V-''•>. 

A •%- '. lISfe * o?> * 5 > 



, ^ ^ .ON C 

% °o c 0 V^-:^ 
^ o^ : 


7 

© 


91 ' .0 9 , 

sO V ^ A // O 

A *fc X ' 'P 

A * 

> V , 

\. 7 - 4 




^ 3 y X/ .>£ \K * v 

1 fi * *©_ ,.&> C 0 N 0 * 

i ’^> (y «■ . * 'P , 

* - ^ v * 


, W „ „ 

V: A ■*. , *« 

V kV 4 ‘-z^yjjy^g N 

^ M 0 $ A* 0 , '> 8 A 0 V 

Vv ^ < ' r ' A> <\ C 

%* v 

7 


^ V c V/JSAV * ,V -> 

■* o« k* ^o x 
~>* 0 



.. : '°» v r-^ 

/ ,/ \ \^K* O o 

^ % s 

: 


-0 N 


%$ 


'•■’*«,% '”’ ^. 0 ^“~ .‘A < "<J' **'' ■'' 

^ ^ o y -> v. ^ ^ vi 

- •»& o' ;« 




■ ) N 


. lW/ 

'vv^«A:”' i 7 t - 


> ^ Y ° 0 / > 




O 

«> *y ^ j 

tv 


■#% v, 4* y '•#• * * * v . 

-« % v iT *' v\* 1 " * ;v v - - °> a . v 

v a' a < c v / v 

J- ^ n. -t v> q n o /yr^s^lLr^ ^ V* v?. 

° y Tj. ' 





\ 0 °,. 





































N < 0 - 


V 1 


* 


c 5 > A o 
O ■/ n . -fc /*.' 

0 * X A° 


N C 


A * 


' o"/ A u0 \ x ^ v. * 8 

•v ‘W 4 , % v\«.\*°^ •- 

* - 7 T>r^/% * <?• y, f 'P> c 

^ ,^ V „ ° ^ V 

, w . _ u * ,$%, ^lllflf * v A V 

c#*_ * -A q\' ^ ^ ^ > '^“ A o\ 

** sS ^V v, . f ^ \ °* x c°^^°JL c ^% 





° ,,A V ^ * 

* A ' ** V v * 

^ y 0 * 


c « ~<p 

v <*, sfj 

J - A 

" ^ V* 

«X l *> X£? 

* vO © 0 % 

'y \ /f. / » 

. r \0 O ^ * oA 

^ N. 0 ©* * .■) h 0 * ,# 

v'lxrA", % V *« 

- A * 

xP '\ V aa 



° z % ** 

,? ^ v ° , X A V <V O 

'--i* . 6 * ♦ AAV a *o * 

<V ( 0 ~ c „ <? 0 * * . X ' * , ^ 

C O' ’ — /V>2 - ^ 



ft' 


'A .«* ’A. -' 








Aj ^ Cz ^//])^ ^ ,a ■/> ^avcs^ > 

^rO ^ ° ’"^ \ (A - y fc 0 . 

. © '"'* </ v \ 

' V ' yt Sfi ' *. 



*£• * 


A v * 


© *.WV / ^ \%? * **' ’**■ WI€ 

O y „ . ^ .(i s // ^ r ‘ x % < 

» ^ 0 * * A U <, N r- <. / * * S S .\ 

% °3 o 0 ' ^ y'^i '°o 

■f . a. y jx\ ^ j&C-y 

^ 0 X : j ^ v ^ o x : 

b»= yi y* *^2m§: x°°- 

,/ % -0 ‘ C' % - . - 

^ A. > <\ v ,-p. -. 

-v. ^ l i ' 4 > 

, .wo.\/ 





0 ^ 

V ^ v 6 °/ > ’ ‘ ' X 0 C 

y r V ^f 4 ^ feu 'V '*#» 

A -m/Ai %<? 'Mmk\ _ 

■x*. '*• ^ ■'.''€%*S aA ^ 

-^Z' y 0 4 x ^ j- « * S s A 

y c°"S/A. x" i! % 



A 'A, 



^ - '° o' 

^o ^l-*. 


w»: 

a 4 -f >- « 

^x° y * ‘ZMJe; . • "’ '- %a^ > iv ^ * ■ 

^ ■ or ^ s _0 C' or As L 

o ' 5 X ^ V ^ 8 1 1 * S ** r °l* * N 0 \^ V * « I 

\ v * 0 ^ > v0 k <, s - ?/ / C k V o -t * 0 ,. ' 

-^-^' * sf> _ ^ ^ c~. 

* .v< 

^■,<V> v _\ 

z: 




'o *'o\> .o v < ^T'^T'' ,■' 

"< \ A* c»" c */% 4 ^x* l ‘ 

^ - <> b o* : i 


* 

1 ® oH - 

> v r ^ 

•y a ' J. 










































